A good balance piece of writing. I studied Vipassana Meditation with a 92 year old Cambodian Buddhist Monk in the Central Valley of California. I did not want to be a devotee. But Bhante Dhamawara assumed that’s what I wanted and tried to force me into it. He gave me some of his Shakti. I meditated everyday for 18 months straight using a Gurdjieff “Morning Exercise” outwardly appearing to be a meditation. Bhante and I remained friends. After he passed at 110 years, he came to me in a dream and asked why l never visited him after the death of his body. I visit him and he visits me. People made many assumptions about my life with Bhante that were not true. I did my best to correct them, but they persisted believing what they wanted to believe about me. I met and worked with a well-known teacher in the Gurdjieff Work Robert de Ropp. It was a brief encounter. He wanted me to be his assistant on a search for intentional communities in the USA. I declined. No regrets.