Otis Goes to Bali: The Breakfast To Remember

So my good friend Oded told me not to tell anyone that I didn’t have any money because it would turn me into just another Westerner having his spiritual journey. I figured hey, he’s saying it, it must be right, otherwise it wouldn’t be coming into my life, which was probably true.

But here’s the thing. I set my primary focus for 2008 to be money. I have played so many avoidance games and fear games and just plain infantile games with money that I was tired of it. I wanted to look this thing in the face once and for all. And it’s been an awkward pubescent ride.

So I meet Dan and Mei Lan from my class and the old voice says stick with them. We eat and stuff and I just don’t say anything. As VV says, I eat off them. I’ve been sleeping in the meditation hall where the course is held each night and I went the next morning to get breakfast. The voice said “Go for it. It’s cool!” So I did. They treated me like I was a guest of the hotel and I thought oh yah I’m slick. And then the bill came and I was like ooohhhhh well I guess charge it to their room.

And that’s when, as my favorite poet Sean Carter once rapped, the ceiling fell in.

I mean, luckily, we’re talking 75 cents here but the weird look on their face when I next saw them of “did you charge something to our room?” made me want to crawl out of my skin and created weird energy between us for the next 24 hours.

So huge lesson learned. To be a man, to be a warrior, to be a decent human being, I must be upfront about the situation that I’m in with people. I must talk about money right off the jump and not slide it in later.

I thank you so much Dan and Mei Lan for being the one’s who volunteered to teach me this lesson and for stamping it into my
consciousness.