Myrrh and Coffee

My home smells of myrrh and coffee this morning.

The brazier is lit and the percolator is running, dripping heated water through freshly ground beans with a touch of cinnamon and cocoa.

The panel heaters are skimming the chill off this morning - and damned if I don't remember as cold a winter as this one in Joburg - while the dogs curl in front of the bar heater, licking each other's paws and necks in a fine display of canine love.
I am an unusually fortunate person, to have this little house to heat and fill with coffee-and-myrrh aromas, and some might wonder what I ever did to find such apparent favour with the gods.

But all comfort comes at a price, this we know. And lately-well, for the past year or so in truth-I have been able to access my traumas, both suffered and perpetuated, precisely whenever I didn't wish to.

I've mentioned several times what's happening. My ability to shift into a deeply altered state of being has become almost easy. I ground, centre, draw down protection, call my deities, helping spirits and ancestors, settle in before the altar...and I'm in a state which can only be described as blissful. The apparent cause-and-effect here is to drive all my demons to the surface, screaming for attention.

Yes, I was warned. And honestly, I can't say I'd refuse this bargain if offered it a second time. I'm at a stage of the process of waking up, now, where the ego is becoming aware of what's happening, and is calling forth all its bag of tricks to get it to stop.

For the awakening of a true soul is almost always the death-or at least radical dismembering-of all the self the ego identifies with.
We are not our egos - any one of them - and to evolve into what we truly are is an interesting, and sometimes painful, process.

But now I must return my attention to this morning, as I have plumbers calling to see to a burst geyser (how is it these things always burst in the winter. Don't tell me, I think I know), and thus I also have complacent pitbulls to turn out into the frozen garden, huffing and complaining like lap dogs. Because the plumbers will almost certainly see my two friends as vicious man-eaters, and we can't have that now, can we?

Pic: What I'm listening to: The Machine In The Garden