So here I am, sitting in my little dream Bug, the one that's just perfect for me, for this chapter, its sweet round body more yellow than the Mexican sun itself ... feeling as though all the happy cells in my own body are shutting down at the same time.
Pedro is still here, his smile now looking a little less bright and wondering what the heck is going on. "Let's take her for a drive!" he says. "Let's do that!" I say, digging deep for some of the energy that was overflowing just ten minutes before. Off we go. I'm not ready to drive her yet so I climb into the passenger seat and once more, I feel this weird-but-clear NO. We drive around, Pedro leaves and tells me how happy he is for me. Alone with Margarita, I feel solemn and as though a talk is needed. I walk around, trying to get familiar, to make friends. As I approach the side mirror on the passenger side, it just falls. I can't say for sure that I actually touched it. But I can say for sure that it fell. The way leaves fall. No drama, no sound. It was there one second and laying on the ground the next. That did not feel good. The next few days were spent trying to make how I felt match how I wanted to feel. There was the comfort factor. The back windows don't open (I had forgotten) so if Lila wanted to sit in the back, she could not put her head out of the window. The seats were clunky. The trunk... let's not even talk about the trunk. And then there was the mechanical factor. This car, which I had been assured ran fine and which I had SEEN - and heard - purr all the way here when in Pedro's hands was suddenly barely running. Shifting gears was a chore, the accelerator wobbled, the brakes were weird. Every time I walked outside of my home, I was filled with the beauty of the car and with how well she looked parked in front of the bright red bougainvilleas. So perfect. And every time I thought about driving her, my stomach hurt. Several people looked at her engine, in the village. VW experts. They were not impressed, to say the least. It seemed that I had bought a lemon, with the color to match. So now what? Selling her like this, felt wrong. I just could not get comfortable with the idea of passing my mistake on to someone else. Plus, I had not completely given up. I love Bugs! Bugs love me! And this one is the prettiest of all the pretty Bugs. One evening, a friend drove her to the city to have his own mechanic amigo look at her. They made it there and he parked her in the shop. The friend was recuperating from hernia surgery and would do a full check-up as soon as he was able. A few days later, my friend called me with tears in his voice, saying that his amigo had just died. He had not been feeling well since the operation but was afraid to go to the hospital because of COVID. When he started to feel so bad that he agreed to call for an ambulance, it was too late: he died on the way to the hospital. He was 37. I was speechless. Of course, this was unrelated. Of course. But I could not shake the feeling that something was not quite right. All the cars had to leave his shop and so Margarita came home. Once again she looked beautiful and once again I tried. And once again, as much as I focused on her Form (Yup), the Essences of Ease and Fun and Safety that I had Declared and promptly forgotten as soon as I laid eyes on her, well these Essences were markedly absent. Still a big NO. Meanwhile, all the kids on the street smiled at her. She was the perfect Happy Bug. Except not really. Apprehending that there was possibly something energetic going on, I bought a bunch of sage and smudged the heck out of her. And then I reached out to a friend who connects energetically with this sort of thing. I texted her and only asked her if she and I could have a session about a car. She knew nothing more. Not that it was mine, not how it looked, nothing. She responded the next day with these words: "I have this knowing that something is attached to the car. Seems like it is causing mechanical issues. It doesn't like your energy... your high frequency. It is pissed and having someone positive does not work for it (...)" As soon as I read her words, I knew she was right. There was anger. I felt anger from the darn thing and had from the moment I sat in it (now if this is too woo-woo for you, you may want to stop reading right here). No amount of yellow paint or cute roof-rack was managing to hide the energy. The car was pissed at me. Wow. Acknowledging this felt so good, though. So real and aligned. Now we could start getting some work done. My friend then texted again and encouraged me to "look within and see why I may have attracted this." Before I even finished reading her words, I knew exactly what was going on. There is a principle I learned a long time ago and which I use often in my work. It goes something like this: "Wherever, in your life, you feel a lack of Power, Self Expression, Freedom or Creativity, simply ask yourself where there might be a leak in Authenticity." If this is your first time reading this, you may want to take a moment to re-read it and let it in all the way. It's a mouthful, I know, and it is one of the best Clarity and Life-Moving tools I know. For certain, I was feeling no sense of Freedom or Power, within this situation. Where then, was there a leak in Authenticity? As is seemingly always the case with this tool, the exact second that we ask that question, that we open-heartedly make ourselves available to the answer, it shows up. Crystal clear. It sure did for me. When I decided to move down here, I knew that I needed to continue the change I had begun a few months earlier. The change included a higher level of anonymity within my work. I would continue to do what I do, what I love to do, what I have to do - but I would do it away from the Ballroom, away from "the branding," in a way. I would do it somewhere where hardly anyone knew me and I would do it quietly. Quietly as in: not loudly. As in: not bright yellow. As in: not devastatingly cheerful. This was of the utmost importance to me, prompted by the need for healing. And yet. And yet. Because we gravitate towards what is familiar, because I knew that Margarita was oh so very "me," I had run headlong toward its comfortable yellow-ness, ready to bypass comfort, practicality, and ignoring what it was I really needed to support my life down here. Which as my son put it, was: the ugliest, sturdiest, tallest, well-working car I could afford. I had mistaken Form for Essence. Yes, me. Talk about humbling. No wonder things were not going well. As soon as the "why" made sense to me, as soon as I got honest with the situation I had created, everything began to disentangle swiftly. Knowing that this car was not for me, I wanted to get it ready for its next home. I wanted to honor our path-crossing and bless it to its next life. Which, against all good sense, meant throwing more money at it. Within days, I was connected with a new mechanic, dubbed "The Bug Whisperer." Flavio came to pick up Margarita one early morning and assured me that I would get her back within two weeks. We agreed on a price and he went to work. A week ago, he drove her back to me with a fully refurbished engine and things working well. I took her for a drive. She and I talked a little bit. She no longer hated me, I felt. She was still making people smile as they saw her tootle along. When my sister arrived, we drove her through the village's cobblestoned streets and reminisced about our very first Bug. It was super joyful. And she still wasn't my car. So, in a last act of love, I bought her some super groovy orange and yellow striped seat covers and I began the process of finding her real people. That too turned out to be a perfect adventure.
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