28) Lucky Streak

Have you ever known someone who is just lucky repeatedly?

I have, and I wonder how that happens.

Before he died of old age, I used to play poker with Royal.  He wouldn’t win every hand, but he was pretty consistent over the entire game, every time we played.  He was even able to go to a poker club, play against the best, and win.

We used to say that he could “call cards”, in other words, if he needed a card to win, he would get it.  He could bet on an inside straight and get the card he needed.  Do you know what the odds against that happening are?  A lot!

What would it take?  He would have to be able to arrange the cards in the deck as the hand was being played, because it would be difficult to predict when another player would fold, and then Royal would get a different card, but it was the card he needed.

But how could he change the order of the cards while the hand was being played---of course without being seen?

Was it some kind of magic?  Power of positive thinking?  Prayer?  Actually Royal didn’t believe in anything metaphysical, so he couldn’t have been doing it on purpose.  I think he was in denial about that.

So if he wasn’t doing it, who or what was?  And how?  These are the questions that have me thinking these days.  I don’t know the answer, but let’s examine it anyway.

Assuming that the order of the cards is being changed without being seen, the only way this is possible is to be able to stop time.  That way no one would notice. 

What about just changing the players’ perceptions so that they experience the cards in a certain order?   I don’t buy it.  The cards are physical and are dealt physically by the dealer. 

If he wasn’t doing it, it must be some kind of spirit---a spirit with the ability to manipulate things in the physical plane and to temporarily stop time.  I know I am losing some of you at this point, but I am not satisfied with “it’s just magic”---not even close to considering just coincidences.

Let’s look at the candidates.  A spirit who just hangs around poker games.  No, it has to be an entity who follows Royal.  Maybe a spirit-guide?  How about God?  An angel?  Jesus?  Royal’s own soul?

I don’t think God would bother.  Metaphysical beliefs do posit the Source-Consciousness, but why would someone that all-encompassing bother with poker?  And it is hard to imagine Jesus or an angel, whatever that is, bothering either.  For what purpose? 

I do like a spirit-guide for Royal or maybe his own soul.  An entity at that level would be interested in Royal’s winning, or perhaps the effect it has on the other players.

Spirit-guide?  Soul?  According to metaphysics the soul is a consciousness which collects experiences from the myriad lifetimes it incarnates.  A spirit-guide would be an entity who aids in certain circumstances.  I don’t know, but for the purposes of this enquiry, let’s just say spirit-guide.  It doesn’t matter, because the act of changing the cards in the deck would be the same for either.

The spirit-guide would need to pay attention to the hand.  It would need to be able to see the cards in Royal’s hand and to reason out what card was needed at a particular point in the hand.  Poker is not that difficult, so no big deal there.  Then it would need to be able to see the cards in the undealt deck.  Sounds like 3D vision.  Pretty cool!

This next part is pretty tricky.  It would need to stop time first, then take the deck from the dealer’s hand, rearrange the cards, put the cards back into the dealer’s hand, and then restart time.  All this without the dealer feeling anything different.  Of course that little problem could be solved by manipulating the dealer’s perception.

Poker might not be the perfect example because there is counting cards, etc.  But what about craps, where the dice have to land a certain way in order for there to be a winning streak?  That’s real time.  Maybe easier because all it would take is stopping time for the end of the dice bouncing.

It seems to be the prime-directive of spirits that they not show their manipulations obviously, at least not provable by physics.  Healings can be done more easily because we know the body can heal itself.  A healing might be against the odds, and the doctors are amazed, but it doesn’t violate physics or chemistry or biology.  It is a matter of timing, the healing happening now or sometime in the future or not at all.

I wonder if a high-speed camera could catch a manipulation at the end of a dice throw.  Probably not because just the act of filming it would preclude the spirit from performing a manipulation.  Kind of like quantum-mechanics.

There have been many studies by scientists who wish to authenticate a person with some psychic ability.  The test would be some variation of knowing which card will appear next, wavy lines, circle, etc.  It wouldn’t be hard to take the dealer out of the equation.  From what I have read, the first result is usually positive for proving the psychic ability, and then after that, it gets to be random.  Spirits don’t like to be proven to exist.  Deniability.

Why deniability?  I think it has something to do with making sure that a human relies on his own decisions some of the time.  It seems to be a pact between the spirit and the human that the decision a person makes is somehow important.

If that is true, then why would a spirit ever provide a lucky streak?  Could be necessary for that human’s growth or maybe necessary for someone else to observe.

For a religious person who believes in God, or gods, that’s enough.  It is just magic, and I can’t see anything wrong with that.  A lot simpler.  But I am constantly reminded of the beliefs hundreds of years ago when a disease was just magic, and now we know that there are bacteria and viruses.

The point is that now we can use science to heal us and don’t need to pray to God, seemingly in most cases with a higher percentage of positive results.  Of course we still have to pay for the doctor and the drugs or procedure. 

So what if we could understand the spirit manipulations and could communicate with the spirit to fix things?  Would our percentage of lucky streaks go up also?  What if it was a quid pro quo?  I do something that my spirit-guide wants and it will grant me a lucky streak? 

That seems to be the crux of the matter---figuring out what my spirit-guide desires, making it happen, and then communicating what I want in exchange.

I don’t know, but I’ll keep working on it.