More lessons driving

Well, I nearly passed first time. If it hadn’t been for the car that materialised on my left at the roundabout… in the space I was steering into… so that the examiner had to grab the wheel, I would have done…

After some reflection, I came around to the idea that it was really quite a good thing that I didn’t.

Many more readings followed – some that won’t fit in here will provide good example experiences for WikiWing. Let me just share a couple more, though.

Advice after failing 25.1.6 to 45

I cast 25.1.6 to 45 – Without Entanglement, Gathering – immediately after failing, still slightly reeling from that, but already hard at work trying to rebook.

I’m not used to failing at things – not since netball, anyway… – and hadn’t expected to, and didn’t quite know what to do with the experience. Also there was the question of how David and I were going to cope with driving practice. So this was a wide open, ‘please help me put my head back together’ kind of reading, though the question I put into words was just ‘Advice for this next phase?’

25 and 45, Disentangling and Gathering – quite the combination! Completely disengaged, but wholly committed.

The Zagua says ‘Without Entanglement means disaster,’ and I think it’s also how to respond to it, without getting caught up in the mess.

I had quite a bit of disentangling to do. ‘If only I’d passed’, ‘If only that car hadn’t been there’ and ‘Why haven’t I learned how to do this by now?’ – entanglement, all of it. ‘What if I lose all confidence, driving with David?’ – more entanglement. All the things that weren’t going to un-happen; all the things that hadn’t happened yet. If I could extricate myself from that lot, then the next steps, back in the real world, were pretty simple: get in the car and drive. Preferably round quite a lot of multi-lane roundabouts.

With the first and sixth lines of 25 changing, Hexagram 45 comes through strongly.

‘Gathering, creating success.
With the king’s presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to see great people, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Using great sacrificial animals: good fortune.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’

Everyone gathers at the temple, the great people are consulted, the very best animals are offered up: people and resources are gathered for a shared purpose.

The word that often comes to mind for me with this one is ‘investment’: build your reservoir banks high, Gather your water reserves, and you can create a powerful flow to reach your crops. (Only keep the spade to hand for emergency bank repairs.)

As I associate water with emotion, all this comes together and looks to me like my great, big personal investment of time and energy (not to mention money) into this. Now I redoubled my efforts: I practised, I visualised, I watched ridiculous numbers of instructional videos and took notes. I brought the biggest and best sacrificial animals I could muster, and kept running upstairs with more questions for the ‘great person’ I’d married (who’s an excellent driver and a mine of useful information, and was willing to take me out to practise twice a week).

How does Gathering show up in a time to be Without Entanglement?

‘Without Entanglement. Going on, good fortune.’

Journal notes: “To start with, disentangle from the ´if only´ and get on with it. Also from all the ´what if´. Let´s just find ways to make this work.” This one felt very simple: quit brooding, move on.

But line 6?

‘Without entanglement. Acting brings blunders.
No direction bears fruit.’

There is such a thing as being too Disentangled, apparently. What could that look like?

Well… years previously, I’d written in WikiWing,

“A feature of 25.6 for me seems to be things I am just not aware of – they´re not on my radar at all. Zhi 17, because I am moving along smoothly and fluently, perhaps in pursuit of an unrelated goal, when I get an unpleasant reminder.”

That roundabout moment on the test: I was turning right. I’d counted exits, checked my mirrors for vehicles on my left, signalled and moved across… and then, as far as I could tell, the car on my left materialised out of thin air. The first I knew of its existence was when the examiner grabbed the wheel.

‘Acting brings blunders’ – interestingly, the word I translated ‘blunders’ also means clouded vision. It was raining during my test, and the side window and wing mirror must have been covered in raindrops. I must have had the classic mindset of, ‘I can’t see anyone so I can go,’ and just kept on Following my familiar roundabout routine. Heh. Well, this is why we have driving tests…

Sober confidence: 64.6 to 40

Just one more reading to share. This one was from a few short weeks before my second test, and initially was about continuing practising with David without going back to Sarah. I’ve mentioned it before, in this post.

I’d already more or less decided to do this: I’d asked what would be the effect or gift of having another lesson or two with her, and received Hexagram 33, Retreat, unchanging. That actually made immediate sense, as in the run up to test #1 she’d been saying less and less during lessons, ‘fading into the background’ as she put it, to encourage me to use my own judgement – the embodiment of Hexagram 33.

So this reading was partly about continuing to practise with David, but that also amounted to advice for the last few weeks before the next test.

‘Not Yet Across’ – well, yes. Exactly. A driving-test-shaped river was looming ahead, and I felt plenty of small-fox trepidation.

‘Not yet across, creating success.
The small fox, almost across,
Soaks its tail:
No direction bears fruit.’

I soon had a real-life driving experience to go with this, too: what happens if the small fox drives on into a narrow space alongside a bus where a large van is turning? Quite.

And there was Hexagram 40 again, in the background, reminding me of the advice from months before. Untie the knots, release tension, go when there’s somewhere to go and not when there isn’t, forgive mistakes, embody the trigrams and move decisively from a fluid base, breathe…

From my journal:
“It´s a 40 issue, still. How relaxed are you, how poised, how free of tension and ready to move in any direction? But it is possible to overdo the confidence and get yourself stuck mid-river. Or trying to squeeze past a bloody great van in a tight space.”

Only now I needed not just Release, but a balancing act between that and Not Yet Across:

‘Being true and confident in drinking wine,
Not a mistake.
Soaking your head,
Being true and confident, losing your grip on that.’

To quote my post about wine from back in January (and a couple of weeks before the test):

“Disinhibition and an increase in confidence can be exactly what’s needed when you have a river to cross: you can be less anxious about the future, more capable of anticipating success, more willing to take risks – the imagination crossing the river ahead of the rest of you. But the aim is a subtly altered consciousness: believing in yourself enough to try, but not so much you lose your grip on reality.”

And applying that to this reading –

“I started learning in a state of abject terror, with a lovely instructor who managed to transmute that into a good blend of confidence and caution. Now I’m continuing to learn with my husband, I need to manage that blend for myself.

Remembering I can drive and I’m going to pass a test soon – not a mistake. Losing presence of mind and driving on into the middle of the river a tight space between a van and a bus (just for example, you understand…) – not so good. I can see more clearly now how this line engages with Hexagram 40, Release: it needs the freedom to decide what to do next in each situation. With no place to go, to hold back and wait for the van to finish turning is good fortune…”

(I passed on my second attempt.)

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