A story about magic. A story that could have gone any other way, but it went the way it was supposed to.
The roots of this go way back into my childhood, where I have to thank my mom for raising us the way she did. I found out a few years ago that others used to call my mom a hippie… sometimes. Now that I think of it, it does make sense, as who else would take their five-year-old to fringe organizations to learn how to meditate? Or teach numerology? Tarot Cards?
Nowadays this is your average, mainstream information, but might I remind you this was almost 40 years ago, during the 80s, in Soviet-occupied Estonia. The information was passed on in whispers and there were really just a handful of these people in the whole country, meeting with psychics and discussing life path numbers. My mom was one of them. Thank God and the Universe that’s how she was because that’s what made me who I am.
Fast forward to today. I would say my baseline belief in my intuition and in the Universe has been stronger than for most people, thanks to my mom. That, in turn, coupled with growing up with a vastly opposite cultural conditioning, has also shaped my life. You see, when people talk about manifesting and positive thinking, it is often made out to be this fluffy and very vague thing. It is not. It actually makes a lot of sense (if you stop overthinking it) and has also been scientifically proven to be real.
I don't even know where to start describing the intricate web of magical occurrences that led me to Sedona. There was a new friend from Ohio, Emily, whom I met at a concert in Squamish, BC. This was a concert I won tickets to, through a contest I don’t even remember entering, a concert she was invited to by someone else she had just met. Since no one was able to go with me that day, I was given the contact info for someone who lived locally, also called Emily. But then I ended up meeting a different Emily. If I listed all of these little things, it would take up the whole story.
Anyway, living a nomadic lifestyle, the Emily I met left Canada soon after and we kept in touch. She mentioned that she had booked an Airbnb in Sedona for January and that was the end of the conversation.
For some reason I felt the nudge to look into this place. I found a yoga training program (which I had missed before due to the pandemic and my teacher training) in Phoenix at the start of February. And that was my cue. They only have about a dozen dates for the whole year, taking place all over the world, and on February 4th it happened to be in Phoenix, Arizona. February 4th also happens to be my mom's birthday. In October, I started looking at plane tickets using flight credits that I happened to have with WestJet. Then, right before I clicked “confirm”, I glanced at Facebook and one of my friends, who is a flight attendant, had just posted that she had a couple of discount codes that were expiring. For WestJet. So now the ticket cost went down to $250 CAD, round trip!
However, there was another issue: I did not have my passport. My Estonian passport, that is. I could not get it since I had to give fingerprints in person and the consul was not going to come to the West Coast anytime soon. I had been trying to arrange a flight to Ottawa or Toronto to get that done for over a year, but it just wasn't working out and the round trip would have cost me over four times what the trip to Sedona cost. But there would be no Sedona without a passport. Against all logic, I felt calm and fully trusted that if things were meant to work out, they would.
Now here is where a lot of people stop when they want to manifest something. You have to create your luck, your belief needs to be followed by action, which is backed by knowing that what you want is already decided and here. So I pestered the embassy a bit and also urged others to write who needed consular services. Just as I had almost given up, they announced that the consul was coming to Vancouver. I received my passport with two weeks to spare. And that’s when I told Emily I was coming. She didn't even know!
I still had not bought a ticket to the yoga training, because it did not feel right. Now, there is a difference in feeling between fear and intuition, your gut feeling. And like a muscle, it needs to be trained. I’m sure all of you have had those times when you get a slap from the Universe because you went against that gut feeling and when something unpleasant happened right after, you instantly knew why.
Two days before my flight, Emily had to escape the Airbnb because of a rat infestation and we were laugh-crying on the phone at 2:00 AM because we didn't know what was going to happen and neither of us had the financial means to book anything new at such short notice, considering what an expensive destination Sedona is. She was eventually rebooked for another week on the other side of town, in West Sedona, which ended up being the most amazing place.
Emily was also supposed to pick me up at the airport, but her plans changed and now I had to rent a car. For a second, I saw it as another wrench in my plans, but I had “seen” it. In my mind’s eye… the freedom of driving up alone. The excitement. And when I saw the ad for a car on a car sharing app, I instantly knew—I had to book it!
So there I was in Arizona, just about leaving Greater Phoenix, driving up the highway in my fully loaded, sparkling blue badass Dodge Challenger, singing along to a song with happy tears in my eyes. And then I hear a clank. A car speeds up to get next to me and the driver is yelling something from his open window while we're both driving at 70 miles per hour. I knew very well what he was saying, but I think my brain and my body needed to process and catch up. Because, how could this be happening? I can’t have a flat tire now!
I pulled over to the shoulder. Someone stopped to help, but this model didn't have a spare tire, so he left. Roadside assistance wasn't answering their phone. The rental app wasn't responding. The owner was also not picking up, and the tire repair machine that came with the car was not working. Minutes were passing by, and I was feeling quite unsafe by the side of the highway with cars speeding by so close to me. Then, the sun started to go down. It was getting cold… I was in the desert after all.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry, so I did a bit of both.
To be continued…
(You can keep in touch with Eline Mets' activities on Instagram.)
