My morning ritual is sacred… Calm. Quiet. Uncomplicated.

I wake early, consciously create my day and enjoy my coffee. It’s a slow, clean entry into the day. A space that belongs to no one but me. My energy is fresh. My mind is clear. This is when I feel most myself.

So when I heard a soft plop while sipping my coffee and turned toward the mug, the last thing I expected to see was a cockroach floating to the surface of my coffee. Yes, a live one. Floating to the surface. Swimming…

For a moment, my brain froze. Logic scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing.
Had it been in there the whole time?
Did I almost drink that?
I replayed the sound, the moment it landed. I remembered lowering the cup just seconds before.
How the hell did it get in there?

And then came the internal wave: revulsion, disbelief, a loud exclamation “WTF!”, followed by the strange calm that often lands just behind the initial jolt and scattered thoughts. Relief it hadn’t fallen on me. Gratitude that I’d heard it land. Curiosity at the sheer weirdness of the moment.

I stood up, walked to the kitchen, and poured the entire mug out the window into the garden. Maybe the cockroach would survive. I wasn’t going to kill it… not today.
I even said aloud, “Disgusting,” but not in rage. More like naming what just happened with the dry comedy of a seasoned mystic.
Then I made another cup of coffee.

Here’s the thing. I grew up in Africa. I’m used to mega insects, snakes, and all kinds of wild, scary creatures.
I’ve had real survival instincts trained into my nervous system since birth.
I don’t have a phobia around bugs — I know how to deal with them.

But cockroaches!
They’re my personal heebie-jeebie trigger. I really don’t like them.
Something about their scuttling activates a very specific repulsion in my body. And yet, despite encountering plenty of them in my life, never — not once — had one landed in my coffee.

Which is why what struck me most that morning wasn’t disgust, or panic. It was precision.
That exact timing. That exact plop.
Not a second earlier. Not after I’d taken a sip. But right before.
When I could still hear it, see it, and trust myself to choose my next move.

It felt like life showing me, yet again, that there’s no need to spiral if I’m fully here in the present moment.

This is what living in Free Presence actually looks like.
Not bypassing what’s gross or shocking. But also not letting it overtake the nervous system.

I didn’t panic. I didn’t scream. I didn’t go into blame or shame. I didn’t wonder, “Why do such weird things happen to me?” Because they don’t. They happen with me.

Nothing bad had actually occurred. I was safe. I hadn’t swallowed anything.

I took the next step, even gave the cockroach a second chance. Normally, it wouldn’t survive…
But this time, something in me paused. Let go. Moved on.

It’s such a small detail… a cockroach in a morning coffee cup. And yet, I could have freaked out, collapsed, made it mean something about me or the day ahead.

Instead, these are the kinds of moments that make a mystic. The strange ones. The everyday edges where we get to choose who we are, again and again.

And most of all, I’m just really, really glad I was awake enough to hear that plop.