Two days into what developed into an intense Mercury Retrograde, I was pulling out of the driveway of my apartment complex, headed to work, when a sudden clunk-clunk-clunking accompanied by a marked decrease in acceleration alerted me to the fact that something was wonky. I actually surprised myself at how calm I was as I pulled to the side of the road, called AAA, and waited for the tow truck. I was aware of old patterns attempting to surface -- Old fears trying to get my attention with all their 'What ifs.' What if I can't afford to get her fixed? What if I'll need to find a new car? What if this means I really don't have what it takes to get along in this world?
Louder than those voices, though, was the one reminding me that I'd been through this kind of thing before and I always come through, I'd always manifested the money, and there was purpose behind this. And there was the fact that just the night before I'd remarked to a friend how I'd wished I didn't have to go work that Friday. D'oh! Prayer answered!
I had also just recently attended a workshop on Faery Doctoring, working more intimately with the Fae for healing, and I wondered if I'd somehow offended them, or not fulfilled my agreement with them, their resulting displeasure taking shape in my car failure. Almost instantly to my mind came the realization that, no, this was an initiation.
Once I had it towed to a garage and they had a chance to look at Suzaku (my car is named after an Anime character who is a Chinese god of love who appears in the form of a phoenix), it sounded like it would be a relatively easy and inexpensive fix, and if they could find a used part to replace the part that had broken, I was only looking at around $400 rather than the $1000+ for a brand new part. Sure, I could take another day off of work if that's how it played out and I got her back that quickly, and relatively at a price I could work with.
Well, the extra day turned into a full week as used part after used part turned out to be in worse shape than the one that had broken on Suzaku, and the garage was telling me I'd probably need to get a brand new part. From my original optimism and faith, my spirits began to spiral into a nose dive. Obviously I am not good at manifesting if I've had to do without my car for an entire week, having to beg for rides to and from work, and on top of the $1000 something that I'd have to fork out to pay for the fix were the couple days of pay I missed out on while the garage was not fixing my car. I was pretty much in the dumps feeling powerless and like a victim.
When it seemed I had no other choice than to buy a brand new part, I called a guy, who I consider my real mechanic, though I don't go to him very often because his shop is about an hour away, and I asked if he had any connections where he could get me either a used part or a less expensive new part. "You don't even need that part," was his answer. "Without it, all that happens is your four-wheel drive becomes a two-wheel drive."
Holy crap! I excitedly called the garage and told them what I'd heard, and my spirits sank again as they gave some seemingly plausible explanation on why that wouldn't work. I called my guy back and told him what they'd said and see if he could help me find the necessary part. At this point my mechanic got pissed. After telling me they were jerking me around and just trying to get more money out of me, he asked if I wanted him to call them for me. "You'd do that?" I asked, not doing a very good job of hiding my surprise. And he did.
My mechanic called the garage, saying he was my cousin who works at a salvage yard up north, and that he had a part for me but had no way to get it to me. He then played dumb while asking specific questions about the broken part, and finding out that it had actually already been removed. He then got them to agree to let me come pick up my car and drive it, as is, up to his salvage yard. When he called me back and told me, I thanked him profusely, but when I called the garage myself, they told me it still wasn't drive-able because it needed that part. What?!
Now I was pissed. I called AAA and found out they do have a policy of one additional free tow to another shop if you're not satisfied with the first you were towed to. I had them pick up Suzaku at the garage and take her to my mechanic, in whom I had complete trust in his integrity. Still, the uncertainty of the past week had weighed on me and I had a hard time keeping my faith up as my mind was flooded with "what ifs." What if there were something my mechanic wasn't aware of that would still require me to get a brand new part. What if I still have to come up with all that money. What if what if what if...
Then I stopped. I suddenly recognized the similarity between my situation and the theoretical thought experiment of Schrodinger's Cat. The physicist Schrodinger proposed that if you shut a cat into a box with a vial of poisonous gas that had a 50/50 chance of opening, until you actually opened the box, the cat existed in both states of alive and dead. It was the opening of the box, and the perception of the observer, that fixed the cat into one state or the other. At that moment Suzaku existed in this twilight zone of being both already fixed and needing a ton more money to fix her. I was the co-creator of this reality, and so I focused on the former state, that she was already fixed, inexpensively, because that was the reality that felt the lightest and most joyful to me. I further realized that the state of heavy darkness I'd found myself in while Suzku was at the first garage was not because of my worry of the expenses and everything, but was because what they were telling me wasn't true. It wasn't until I decided to explore my other options and find another way that my spirits rose. The Truth is always lighter than fallacy and deceit, and in the future I will try to recognize this feeling and remember it as meaning that whatever the situation seems to be, it's not true.
Once I walked in the new lighter feeling for a little while (and don't think other doubts and thoughts didn't surface during that time) I called to check in on Suzaku's status. She was all ready to be picked up, and the total bill (including the oil change he performed after checking the fluid levels for me) was $134!
That was pretty miraculous. My cat, er... I mean car, was still alive.
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