Stacking the Deck

Can we control the details of our dreams?

Luck = Opportunity x Preparation

I have used this phrase probably too often in my life. I think about it like stacking a deck of cards in my favor. Every day you wake up, and draw some new experiences; I reasoned that you could change the distribution of the cards by doing things, and over time things would add up in your favor.

I’ve long had a goal to become financially independent. The preparation factors felt pretty clear to me! My hobbies were inexpensive. I vacationed infrequently and domestically (woo churning!). I got an engineering degree. I lived with roommates, and learned to cook. The breadth that this goal had on my life was pervasive; the deck stacking was borderline obsessive. If I can correctly enumerate all of my embodied capacities, all of my evolutionarily tuned neural weightings, and matrix this biological system with updated extra-cerebral information (e.g. the sum total of the internet), I would end up on an optimized path of odds-maximizing behavior. This went on for a while, around 12 years.

Late in 2024, I quit my job to take a sabbatical. I wouldn’t call myself independent but my choices above led to the outcome of quite extended time off without an immediate pressure to seek funds. I could see this as some level of proof that actions I took led me to this place. That I was able to expertly navigate the forest of obstacles, identify the right bearing marks of moss on trees, and track slopes.

I wonder, what if I hadn’t catalogued so many details? What if I hadn’t spent so much time in spreadsheets, doing math, concluding what I could and could not do in the coming years? The tricks, the rules, the theory - it all took ample time to incorporate. This isn’t to question whether it was useful, but just to muse about its necessity.

Because sure, I ended up at a location where I have independence! It fits the definition, but it doesn’t have the same form. It is the same but different. I took one path, through specific trees, over certain rivers at specific points. But when I look behind me, there is no one path that led here.

There are probably some explanations for why I operate this way. Perhaps my unique little-t traumas added up. A need for control developed to buttress the unintended emotional gaps I experienced as a child who couldn’t explain what he was feeling to parents who were also still figuring so much out about themselves. I could be soothed by the illusion that I was in control of how I got here, and therefore I am in control of where I am going, and know how to walk there.

The illusion Shattered

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where I started questioning the level of control I wielded over my goals. It certainly proceeded with earnest in 2022. I had some experiences that quite rapidly opened me up to the possibility that I control nothing. It probably isn’t a surprise that I got into stoicism and rationality around then, too - which almost seems a natural step. I was reeling from what felt like free falling without a parachute (vacillating between exhilarating and terrifying), and the tools of rationality easily fit into my empty hand. Another faith, a reconstruction of the old system of control with shiny new logic and a Bayesian outlook on life.

Everything seems quite linear, like we are a rocket ship escaping the gravity well of Earth, but a realistic takeoff is not vertical - it is angled. Eventually we find ourselves back over the same spot, this time with a new vantage point at a higher altitude. Each revolution looks similar enough to the last one, so it’s hard to notice the changes, but if we were able to take snapshots and compare the moments we would see how different things look across each experience. The lessons don’t get discarded as we chart ahead so much as they get built atop, or at the very least they serve as reference points for the next rotation. It all seems intelligible and sensible when it’s right next to us - but while the road behind us seems flat, it was actually more like the steep face we are climbing in front of us. The things we haven’t done yet are always going to seem more insurmountable than what we have already accomplished and been through.

The Magician’s Deck

What seems to be happening is that I’m stacking a deck that doesn’t play by the rules. I think that I’m putting cards in there that will matter. I am materially altering my favors. I can hold the deck, I can look at the cards, and see what I might draw - but the cards are never quite the same. Something about them is always different. I was focusing on thinking that the number, suit, and shape were the important variables, but what actually mattered was the ever-shifting art on the card. There were subtle cues, an inkling that something else was going on just outside of my vision - not strong enough to readily convince me that I was missing most of the picture. When something is drawn, it comes from a pool of infinite cards, like Shin Lim flipping a card into existence on what looked like a blank table. Since there are infinitely many cards with a specific number, suit, and shape - can I really add anything of value to the possibility space by *doing* something specific?

Whenever I have permitted myself to look less closely at something, I have been able to see more. Focusing on the details starts to feel like picking out individual blades of grass to navigate across a field towards the horizon, or throwing pebbles into a lake to raise the water at the shore. If I can take my hands off the wheel and relax into the vision of being at that horizon, I more fluidly experience my time and emotions.

In Practice

Three months ago, I was sitting in my car after setting up many appointments to finish restorative dental work that has been ongoing for a couple of years. I was facing a lot of needles and drills... quite unpleasant. But for some reason, I closed my eyes and thought about myself on the other side it all. I remember feeling how soon it would all be past, and I felt the lightness of completion - not having to worry about my teeth again for a long time.

The other day I got my final sign off - the work is done, no more adjustments, no more needles. I sat in my car and remembered. I re-experienced the sense of completeness, of arrival. It was time, collapsed together. Not in the sense that everything that happened in the last three months (which was a lot!) vanished, but more that the moments have folded next to each other in a kaleidoscope helix, and I can reach between the temporal slices and know that it is all happening at once. Or it's like the pages of a book, that once done being read, get nestled together again - unfolded for experience and then folded back into the tapestry, existing without a care for what we call “time”.

Ah, so this is how I was meant to get here. It all makes sense, even though none of it seems necessary to the outcome, and it definitely wasn't needed - but of course it had to happen this way. It makes sense until it doesn't. It almost feels like I'm winking at myself through an odd dimensionality.

Manifesting

I suppose this could have implications for manifesting, or dreaming bigger. Last night, a friend named Raymond suggested that to manifest, one needs to "fully feel what it will be like to exist in the moment where your desire has been fulfilled, and then completely drop it, and let the universe guide you there".

Then, literally as I was writing and editing this, an email popped in from

Bruce Kasanoff

encouraging us to "embolden" our visions. But the words and visions don’t typically arise easily for me. Every big dream example that comes up, I can easily explain how it isn't realistic, or perhaps I don't even get there and just flatly say "that isn't something I want".

Is my experience linking across moments in time even an evidence of manifesting, or am I missing the plot? Does a "big dream" have to look any particular way, or is it all relative? Maybe believing that I could get through 3 months of anxiety-inducing mouth terror was a big hurdle for me - and having that moment of awareness was a monumental shift in navigating the path. Had I not "let go", would I have walked through more glass on the way to this point? Would it have been slower, or cost more energy, as I spent all of my time glued to rocks and roots on the path in front of me, instead of letting my body move fluidly across the trail?

Going through 3 months and 6 dental procedures, where I can only recount a few moments of high anxiety over them, does probably constitute an "expansive vision" for myself, especially if I frame expansive as "something I haven't been able to do before". My capacity expands, and I'm only stagnant if I don't focus my manifestations on things that I need to stretch towards. But part of me wonders if this is simply a truism - we don't need to manifest things that are not already expansive visions! If we do not need to expand, it doesn't need to be a vision. It's like dividing by zero, manifestation without expansion is an undefined entity.

I'm liable to read a lot more words than what is written on the page. When someone says "don't self-limit your beliefs, you need an expansive vision of your life", it is easy to tell myself harsh things, or start wondering how much I've fucked up, or wasted time, or that I’m doing it wrong. I have to wonder, how do I even know what expansive means? Do I need to check with other people and see if they agree? I feel the most important thing is "I should do what feels expansive to ME", but it is not easy to find those words and realize they are the only signal hiding in all of this noise.

An ineffable presence erupts when I hear and see myself, and my expansiveness, clearly. The moment melts away and everything all clicks into place; the moment transcends time.

Manifesting Routinely

Now, I suspect that things like this are happening like this all the time. We are full of these moments of complete awareness, but it seems uncommon to recognize that we are in awareness. I'm reminded of a fish joke - one fish says to the other "how's the water", and the other fish is like "what is water?". Will I be able to step into my awareness more often now? That might be nice, but I've spent enough time trying to bottle lightning that I know it generally comes and goes as it pleases, and can't be recorded into a spell to cast or a potion to brew. It will happen inevitably, but only once I let go of the need for it to keep happening. I cannot force myself to be manifest or present, but that does not mean it is inaccessible to me.

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Thanks for reading!

So, this is my first post, and there was this template here...

I suppose it will be at least useful in hindsight to include these thoughts, even if I’m one of the few that ends up reading it.

1. Why this, why now

I would credit this post to other Substack writers (tons of inspiration there!), but particularly my fiancée, and my friends. They know I really enjoy writing, talking, and bouncing ideas off of people, and I have been gifted such generous words of encouragement that have sadly taken quite a long time to spur action. In one sentence - I am hoping to be selfish and find other people and communities from whom I can learn, and I hope that some people might be helped by my inane ramblings.

2. What to expect?

Substack asks me to tell you when to post, what you might read, what is free, and what is paid. I don’t have enough clarity to forecast that!

I do hope to make posting a regular habit. I have 100 half-sketched posts on paper and countless more in my head, and part of this practice is to enter a more formal dance with the ideas I have traditionally spent more time flirting with.

Once again, thank you for gifting me your attention and taking the time to read :)