Episode 119

Red Carpet

Even if you can’t see the stars at night because of the lights from nearby sprawl or the silhouettes of skyscrapers, the secrets of the universe are readily available… if you’ve got YouTube. Getting under a dark sky deep in the wilds is a reliable channel for hooking up with all we are, but for many, that’s not an easy option. So check out some nebulae or northern lights on your smartphone.

As I’ve got both YouTube and access to the wilds, I consider myself pretty blessed. Then again, there’s a third option for discovering all that’s worth knowing: the inside universe, as my Taoist doctor Master Ru says. We all are wilderness walking, that parable about the fish not knowing what water is. We are already everything; we can access all knowing, the cosmic archive of future and past events, by just feeling, paying attention to our breath, our heartbeat, by attending to the process of being alive. That’s what I’m finding out, at least.

How does that feel for you, my friends? Are you with me, coming along for the ride? Because I can imagine some of you crave proof. Evidence that what I offer on this podcast has any relevance to your life, your experience. Or are you just here to be entertained? Maybe a little of both?

The kingdom of God is spread upon the earth and man does not see it, so sayeth Thomas in the Gnostic gospels. Are we standing in waters of eternal life and refusing to drink? Can you dream of being more? Would you let in all the excellence if you knew you could?

That’s the fun of this podcast, of me, frankly. I’ve decided to let in the excellence, oh yeah baby. I’ve come a long way since I started telling the story of the Daughter of God in 2016, the movie that made me. (I love this tagline.)

The proof, the evidence backing up my wacky rantings, is in the progression of these episodes. If you’ve got a few hundred hours, you can see / hear for yourself who I was when I started podcasting and who I am now: What’s been accomplished in the last couple years, what I’ve realized, what wasn’t before and what is now.

But wait, that’s not all! Who gives two fucks about the past, even MY illustrious past? What we’re all into is the now! Show us something sweet right now, make some magic! Manifest crazy amazing shit, Dan Kelly. Pull out all the stops.

The question is, can we recognize a miracle when we see one? You are a bona fide miracle. You’re listening to/watching one too. Check me

Wrapping up our first feature film is the theme of Season 4 Choice. Since this movie is my making, perhaps our making, who will I be by the end of Season 4? Who will you be?

I suspect the blooming is exponential. We could experience as much beauty in the next few months as we have in the last couple of years. I’m pretty much counting on that, expecting that. Anyone who wants to come along can. You’re invited. Tell your favorite peeps. The glorious space ark has plenty of room.

AND… there’s always the possibility that I’m about to reprise the myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. Maybe my wax will melt and I’ll plummet to the earth. Die young and leave a good-looking corpse like James Dean. Imagine having a front-row seat for that. Not to be morbid; I’m just acknowledging the possibility that I might be off my nut, that EVERYTHING I’m saying is WRONG.

Either way, what’s coming up should be fun, fascinating, epic. So stay tuned. Magic is.

What happens to a guy who releases limits, who opens up to all he could be? I’m super curious. Also feels kind of necessary, timely if you believe war correspondent Chris Hedges. He’s a contemporary Paul Revere, warning citizens of the USA that we’re on the brink of totalitarian rule. For sure the whole consumer paradigm has to be brought to a screeching crashing halt

Episode 118

Ketones

Hey. Dan Kelly here with the Daughter of Godcast, Season 4, Choice, and this is Episode 118… Does it matter what the title is? Titles are supposed to encapsulate the episode, but often I don’t know what the title is until after I write. So let’s just call this Daughter of Godcast, Season 4, Choice, Episode 118 (mumbles). You didn’t hear the title because I am not speaking clearly, or the audio cut out — unless you’re reading, and then you already saw the world “mumbles” in parentheses, like a stage direction.

Season 4, Choice, is the finale, the denouement. Everything from now on is about the full manifestation of Daughter of God, the feature-length post apocalyptic romantic comedy, which as you’ll likely recall is the movie I’ve been, we’ve been, stewarding, cultivating, shepherding, doula-ing for the past decade plus. You may have only joined the adventure in the past year or two, or maybe the past week, but you’re as important to her coming forth as I have been now.

Why? Because you’re here, watching, listening, reading. This podcast is the vanguard. Daughter of God hasn’t sprung forth all at once like Athena from Zeus’ forehead. Nope. She’s oozing in like fog, she’s fading in like dawn. In this season, she’s not only coming, she comes.

Will her coming be the end of the story or just another beginning? I’m leaning toward Season Four being the last season of the Daughter of Godcast, FYI.

The last few days have been exciting! I teamed up with Emily, who is soon to join the gang as official copy editor and literata for dog.movie, to do three days of water fasting. I’ve done all manner of cleanses and fasts before, but my experiences with water fasting have been very limited and… fuzzy. I don’t remember much about them. I got fired up when Milagros sent me a Joe Rogan podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick who told Joe that during fasting our organs shrink and then reconstitute with new cells. That sounded cool. Then getting ready for the fast, I watched Dr. Joe Mercola talking to Dr. Jason Fung about his book The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting, and he said that there are stories from prisoner-of-war camps about dudes reciting books from memory and learning new languages in a few days. That’s what I’m talking about — I’m sure the Daughter of God would dig a boost in my processors.

This fast coincided with phase one of a key outcome — uncomplicating DOG’s financial records. This would be an ideal opportunity to test-drive a ketone-fueled brain. And lo, success. For 13 hours, I blissfully banged away on the keyboard, simplifying hundreds of bookkeeping entries. Probably by the time you watch, hear, or read this, phase one will be in the bag.

For me, the key to a happy water fast is plenty of high quality water, four quarts or more a day. I dip mine right out of Crystal Lake, filtered through a big Berkey. I think that’s better than well water and certainly way better than chlorinated water or bottled water. But I digress.

Now my plan is to charge up with the best foods and then, on the new moon, December 7, start another water fast and zip through some more complicated DOG mind benders. Along with wrapping postproduction, there’s business and outreach logistics that have to be handled before DOG goes to festivals. More detail on all this in future episodes.

You can water fast on the new moon too — solidarity!

In Episode 117, Smartphone, Jil advised me to expand my presence on Instagram and throw caution to the wind. I have since been ramping up, and guess what. Strangers are liking me. Jil was right! I’m going to pull out all the stops on wildswizard (that’s me on Instagram). What to do about the dog.movie Instagram account, @dog.movie? I complained t

Episode 117

Smartphone

Season 4 of the Daughter of Godcast, Episode 117, Smartphone. Summer toys are taken off the lake to the soundtrack of a cell conversation with pig whisperer Jil Johnson, in which she drops some crucial insider dope about fame. She helps us to see how fear may have caused an overcomplication of our project. There’s no transcription of this spontaneous exchange, so for those of you who are read only, our apologies. This is all the text you’re gonna get. For the rest of you, enjoy both the sights and sounds of movies getting made, tangentially.

Episode 116

Telling

Tell me a story, Daddy! A proper story has to pose a problem; the characters have to have a bit of a hard time. Drama and conflict. In real life, we also have trouble, heartbreak, even crushing defeat. So there’s parity between what we live and what we call entertainment. Why do we indulge in stories when there’s already plenty of woe in our own experience?

The characters’ problems are not our problems. We get to take a break from our own problems. Or maybe the characters’ problems are way worse than ours, so there’s a feeling of relief there, of appreciating the comparative mildness of our own strife. For certain categories of stories, everything is always going to work out well for the characters. We read, listen, or watch because we know this. No matter how shitty or scary it gets, it’s gonna be OK.

I’ve been wondering about what our stories say about us. What does our choice of stories reveal about being human, or even the existence of stories in general? This podcast has explored the perspective that we’re in a sort of story, a story that changes depending on how we tell it. Which is maybe an unusual perspective; casual observation suggests that a lot of people believe reshaping reality requires beaucoup energy and time. There’s not much consensus on whether attitude and emotion make any difference.

This is relevant because there’s a few months yet before Daughter of God is done, and the plan is to podcast right on through. Is there any story left to tell?

What if there were significant obstacles standing in the way of completion? That would be dramatic, right? Could I leverage those supposed obstacles to make the podcast more intriguing? Should I? Would a dramatization, an emphasis on the struggle still ahead, threaten the completion? Focusing on problems rather than solutions in order to tell a more gripping story?

Do I have to choose between an intriguing podcast and a robust completion of a compelling feature? Certainly not. They are complementary, though I might not yet know how.

That’s some magic right there, deciding that apparently opposite outcomes are complementary. AND maybe deciding is the key to how the podcast can be gripping and jibe with completion.

Let’s say we get in jams so we can clarify what we want. Which ultimately gives birth to superpowers and magic, when we are open and receptive. This happens behind the scenes, usually, beyond our attention. What if this podcast acknowledges huge obstacles in all their ominousness, and then we just choose to feel great anyway? What does a decision to feel great look like, when confronted with scary shit?

That’s the Daughter of Godcast going forward. Deciding to be fully alive. Love is the pain of being fully alive, sayeth Joe Campbell. Just to keep things a bit translucent and flowing, like watercolors. Reveling, basking and deep appreciation are all we need to realize a movie that surpasses my standards for amazing. So there you go.

I want to share evidence of magic, evidence of a more delicious existence, demonstrating this to myself, mostly. We are all gurus for ourselves. This podcast is both a document and a discovery of what’s worth knowing, what I think of as the fundamentals, the owner’s manual for the human body, for the human game.

Elon Musk says his Tesla cars are chock-full of Easter eggs: strange and wonderful features that are not generally known. Like dancing, cars that dance. There’s no owner’s manual for being human because we get to decide what our features are every day. We get to write our own owner’s manual, consciously or un-. We choose the features, we hide the Easter eggs.

I am not going to try to convince anyone, to sell my viewpoint. You’re into the Daughter of Godcast because your own life experience hints at the veracity of the writing-your-own-owner’s-manual premis

Episode 115

Kali

Hello, Michigan and Planet Earth! Hello, Transdimension Beings, hello! Daughter of Godcast Episode 115, in which we offer a short play, “Welcome to the Kali Yuga,” which is based on a true story.

Welcome to the Kali Yuga is written and narrated by Dan Kelly, aka Shri Fugi Spilt, exclusively for the Daughter of Godcast.

VOICES: Any of the four ages… I didn’t realize… You said it would be… Like this?!

We are swooping along library shelves, close enough to read the titles on the densely packed books. In another room, a conversation is in progress between a man and a woman, single words and snippets of sentences. Now a stack of folded towels, a claw-foot bathtub, a clothing rack hung with shirts and blazers passing by. We’re taking a visual tour of a house, perhaps seeking the people talking. The disembodied voices become louder, clearer.

WOMAN: Fucking Kali Yuga.

MAN: Four ages to choose from, and you’re like, c’mon — Kali Yuga. I was thinking Satya or maybe Treta, but you’re like, don’t be a wimp…

WOMAN: Making a sort of keening growl

MAN: I’m not the one complaining. I was like, if you’re sure, Kali Yuga then, fine. The worst age of all, only assholes and badasses show up for the Kali Yuga. “And we’re definitely badasses,” you said.

WOMAN: Wikipedia was a bit vague…

MAN: Whatever! Going to Wikipedia… “Hinduism,” “the four Yugas, or ages.” OK, I’m reading, ready? “Satya Yuga (also known as Krita Yuga ‘Golden Age’): The first and best Yuga. It was the age of truth and perfection. This Yuga has Zero Percent of Crime and Hundred Percent of Kindness. The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform religious ceremonies. Humans were gigantic, powerfully built, honest, youthful, vigorous, erudite and virtuous. The Vedas were one. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. There was no agriculture or mining, as the earth yielded those riches on its own. Weather was pleasant and everyone was happy. There were no religious sects. There was no disease, decrepitude, or fear of anything.”

WOMAN: That sounds nice.

MAN: Nice?! I could have been forty feet tall with a huge golden penis, erections on command. “Nice” hardly comes close.

WOMAN: No religious ceremonies, though. I like ceremonies.

MAN: Well, it’s not like ceremonies would have been illegal or anything. You could’ve had ceremonies.

WOMAN: But they were not required. I enjoy a sense of purpose. What’s the next one?

MAN: “Treta Yuga: In this age, virtue diminishes slightly. At the beginning of the age, many emperors rise to dominance and conquer the world. Wars become frequent and weather begins to change to extremities. Oceans and deserts are formed. People become slightly diminished compared to their predecessors. Agriculture, labor and mining become existent.”

WOMAN: Agriculture exists. Doesn’t say anything about gardening. What about gardens?

MAN: Agriculture includes gardening, I would think.

WOMAN: Agriculture feels more like an activity sanctioned by the state, whereas gardening implies individual autonomy. I imagine agriculture being sanctioned by a priestly class. Gardening was probably illegal. Your average Jane would be skewered by the minions of the local emperor for an unauthorized grow. Plus oceans are just showing up. So they probably don’t figure out how to sail until the next age. You certainly would’ve missed sailing.

MAN: If sailing wasn’t even invented, how could I miss it? Even though Treta is only half as long as Satya or Krita, at a mere 1,296,000 years, there still would’ve been plenty of time to invent sailing. I could have invented sailing!

WOMAN: Sluggish old triremes

Episode 114

Raw

Only two watermelons left. When they’re gone, that could signal the end, the hard line dividing summer from whatever Season is next on Daughter of Godcast. Still, two watermelons means more watermelon ginger cannabis smoothies ahead. All raw, so the cannabis has no psychoactive effects; in other words, I don’t get high from drinking smoothies that contain unheated cannabis, but I do get something like 100x the dose of all the good stuff, like turpenes, CBD, and THC.

My fair state, Michigan, will consider legalizing recreational cannabis on November 6. With luck, I won’t need to renew my medical marijuana card next month. I can expand my research into growing and, yes, eating this fascinating plant. My very first crop is ripening into dense kolas as we speak. An experienced (and cute) grower friend is teaching me how to trim like a pro.

I do smoke occasionally, but eating raw is probably my preferred cannabis interaction, what with all the superpowers showing up. I’ve recruited a sober and highly evolved friend to eat raw too, and she’s reported uncanny improvements in her family’s life experience. Access to raw cannabis for health and vitality is barely on the radar screen of legalization advocates, but I can imagine in five years or so, eating raw pot will be absolutely unremarkable, part of a balanced breakfast. In 2024, to celebrate the organic reboot of their world-famous toaster pastries, Kellogg’s will introduce a raw pot, watermelon, and ginger Pop Tart. The Pot Tart. Smoking pot won’t disappear, because, let’s just be honest, smoking looks cool. You’re more sexy when you smoke, unless you’re a tobacco addict. Then your kisses taste like prison and dingy bus stations.

I’ve been dipping into the stand-up offerings during my free Netflix month. The comedian Jim Jefferies, of gun control fame, tells the audience his time onstage is not a TED Talk, he’s just making jokes. A giant caveat, which in Latin means, let him beware. Stand-up comedians can say whatever they want, even if it’s just the truth.

I still think podcasters are more badass, though. Because I have to imagine you laughing and having fun while I’m saying whatever I want. Writing whatever I want and then saying it. I don’t have a big theater full of easy feedback, like Jim Jefferies. Just me here in my little white tent, dreaming away. With a kidnapped cat, maybe.

Famous stand-up comics do get more death threats than obscure podcasters. Maybe after DOG is in the world, I’ll get a few of those. Probably not; as I’ve mentioned, I’m only going to be famous among cool people. Cool people don’t threaten, they just adroitly slip past your laser security beams, crouch over you as you sleep, and drip buckwheat honey laced with powdered Philosopher Stone psilocybes between your parted lips, then shed their reactive skintight stealth suits and climb into bed with you (if they’re of a complementary gender configuration; hetero female in my case). That’s a subtle hint, if you’re cool, smoking hot and considering a nocturnal ninja operation in Northern Michigan.

What news of Daughter of God? I’m still deep into logistics that are not ready for reportage, so stay tuned. I’m enjoying the unhurried coalescence of a creative team to stride beside us through completion and beyond. I’ve extended gentle invitations and enjoyed some exciting responses from strategic talent. After much persistence and seduction, a stellar copy editor has agreed to gradually clean up and clarify the episode transcripts. And a precision model maker has agreed to help with miniatures.

Since this is Episode 114, we’re all clear that I don’t know what I’m doing. Here’s the master plan anyway: I’ve got a fuck ton of podcast content on dog.movie. If only 1 percent of that is genius, t

Episode 113

Get Ready

The Farmers’ Almanac predicts a warm wet winter for Michigan. Fuck that. Yesterday I started sealing the greenhouse, in anticipation of deep-freeze temperatures and blustery winds coming off Crystal Lake. I am preparing for an intense winter. Just 10k years ago Michigan was covered by the southern fingertips of glaciers. Is human activity changing the climate? Probably. Is Earth just going to sit back and take it?

I think not.

Plus I’ve got my own agenda, a strong desire. This spring Shoalie and Spray sold me the commodore’s iceboat, big enough for two. So for the winter of 2018–2019, I’ve got a second iceboat I can teach with.

You might have seen my iceboat explorations last winter, when I only had the one man Sprinter. My first winter with the Sprinter I had zero iceboat experience and scared myself shitless. By the end of my second Sprinter winter, last year, I was starting to get the idea, and feeling like I almost might know what I was doing. If we get ice on our lake this winter, there will certainly be an expansion of iceboat virtuosity. And more movies.

So we’ve got to get ready for greatness, and prepare for a badass winter. Fie on the Farmers’ Almanac! Reality is ours for the making. Where there is joy, there’s a cascade of primordial energy, molten power flowing into the templates of our dreams. Build your greenhouses, score a slightly tight set of merino wool long underwear at your local thrift store. Or whatever shape and flavor your desires take, start getting ready. Because they are coming.

Speaking of desires, I started wondering whether DOG could win Cannes. From April to July of 2018, we posted scenes for feedback in Season Two Crowd Creation, but I hadn’t looked at the scenes since August. I’ve been busy doing other things… enjoying summer, selling off equipment from the family farm, playing with rocks in the water, freeing the spirits of ruined sailboats. So I’ve had time away from the movie.

A few weeks back a gorgeous friend stopped by whom I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. After we shared a stack of Shri Fugi Spilt vegan wheat-free (and sprouted) pancakes, I showed her some of the scenes and we played the feedback game. Watching with my prodigal friend, I realized that Daughter of God truly is unique. I’ve never seen anything like this… and I’ve watched a lot of weird movies, to be sure.

Not only unique, but there’s an opportunity here to realize something special. Awesome. Exemplary. DOG could take Cannes.

Infinite intelligence tells us that really ambitious dreams are way easier to realize than puny ones… maybe because so much energy gets flowing. I forget why, but I like the idea a lot. I love having really outrageous dreams and going fully audacious. I love the feelings big dreams bring.

Dreaming big is a crackerjack way for me to feel all that I am. Sure, winning means kudos and recognition, but that’s just external circumstance and aftermath, trivia. Here’s how I get the energy moving: Who would I have to be to win Cannes? What kind of person directs a movie that can sweep arguably the most prestigious film festival on the planet? Am I ready to be he? How would I feel if I were that guy right now?

The movie isn’t done, not quite. I can imagine being done with the movie, I can see the done-ing up ahead. Who do I want to become by finishing this movie? That’s why finishing is so much fun. I’m making myself, awesome.

I’m out of the closet about the winning Cannes thing, and I’m glad. I thought I might keep this desire my little secret, I mean who is crazy enough to think their first feature is going to win Cannes? Me, I am. Because why not? Somebody’s got to win. Why not this guy?

Nobody wants to hear from middle-aged white dudes anymore, I get that. That’s my sweet disadvantage, my exciting o

Episode 112

Her

I just killed a boat. I didn’t want to, I had to. She was heartbroken, abused, squandered, ruined. I didn’t ask to be her killer, her destroyer. Once this merry cruiser sailed the Great Lakes, a pleasure to her people. Then confusion and galling family flippancy, and she was forgotten at the edge of the forest, exposed to the elements and wild creatures. Years passing. She called to me for an ending. She brought me to her, made her my responsibility: to kill her properly, rip her apart bow to stern, marvel at her robust construction. Even waterlogged and rotting, she was tough to take apart.

She asked me to do this thing, this killing. I think because I am a sailor, because I have the water within. I could understand her, see her. Ask her for forgiveness. Forgiveness for everyone who disregarded her, let her down. She must have been so fine in her prime.

Alex and I salvaged what we could — bronze and brass fittings, hobbit-size porcelain sink and loo, a white gas cookstove. Then I set upon her with a skid loader, driving the forks deep into her flanks, slashing sideways and opening up ragged gashes, breaching her hull. Fragments of fiberglass veneer dropping into the dirt. Growling fierce hydraulics tearing splintered timbers of exotic tropical hardwood, harvested before I was born.

Pulling off her stern in one great hunk. Shredding her sides right down to her curving keel. A keel which had to be dragged out of the crib, having defeated the lifting capacity of the skid loader with over 2,300 pounds of lead alloy ballast. Then Jim showed up, and the three of us spent hours wrenching dense metal bricks from an ingenious interlocking entanglement. Finally, just Alex and I were pulling the last of the lead free and dropping her spine into the dumpster, spiky with bent and sheered fasteners.

A violent ending needed, requested. A brave finish for a brave little beauty.

I speak of this to celebrate her and remember her for as long as podcasts are heard, for now you know that she was, and how she passed. Her name was Mai Toy, a silly name perhaps, but hardly a silly story.

Also, I want to tell you about the quality of the killing. To say something about how I gave myself to the doing of this favor, this sacred act. Because we’ve been talking about bliss and how struggle isn’t. Bliss. Struggle isn’t bliss. Unless it is.

When we discussed dreams coming true in 110, I emphasized the efficacy of bright imagination over hard work. Bringing desires into being by feeling fine in contrast to elbow grease, noses to the grindstone, effort. There’s a caveat, tho. Hard work works when we love working. When we struggle purely for the struggle, reveling in our resilience, our endurance, in the flow of our competence and power, then struggle throws off sparks, lightning bolts and rainbows. When hard work feels great, we’re calling miracles just as robustly as when we just feel great for no apparent reason, doing absolutely nothing.

This killing was like that. At first I felt angry. I hated what had been done to her, how she had been squandered. The time, energy, and resources expended to build her so strong, all ending up as landfill.

This fierce feeling had a flip side. Who else besides me could both rend and appreciate her? Who could do the awful work with wonder and reverence? She was finished, she needed a way out, she needed a friend to help her along. I was that friend, her last friend.

Yes, the work was strenuous and emotionally challenging, but I also felt intrigued, engaged, and glad. The request to unmake her was a confirmation of my own significance, my worth. A perfect rendezvous.

So that’s a story about effective action. Action for action’s sake, whether powered by strange passions or merely a magical tingle. Satisfying the body’s yearning to push and pull. Fluid problem-solving with amped-up perception. Falling in love with presence. Answeri

Episode 111

Wonder

While breathing, legs folded and upright, I am a receiver of deliciousness; the signal sneaks up and I am smiling inside. To just be. Letting my more happen.

Words want to be more, they aspire to convey feelings, form conduits of direct experience, emulate life itself. But only life can be life. Then there’s this word-based podcast that we’re making together. Whether or not words can live, I enjoy opening an energetic flow, so when you hear, watch, or even if you’re only reading, underneath the language, the cognition, there is also rapport and a remembering of all we are. Feeling ourselves in the making of words, paintings, or pancakes is an act of telepathy, a hello to the us, the we.

And since this is Summer Vacation, there’s hardly any meaning in these episodes, anyway. Prolly 90 percent rapport, just chillin’ together, enjoying each other. Me rambling on, the music of my voice, up and down, a golden string vibrating in the void.

This is Episode 111, Wonder, Daughter of Godcast Season Three Summer Vacation. Seventy-three degrees in Northern Michigan on October 9, 2018, and yesterday while catfishing I heard a cricket. So summer lingers. A dash of temporality for flavor; you might be listening to this just before the heat death of the universe at the edge of the Oort cloud. We can connect even with all that between us. What does that say about the between, I wonder?

In the last episode, 110 Earth Dog, we riffed on desire and what or where our bliss is. Starting with where it ain’t. Desires suck when we assert unattainability. To avoid pain, we attempt to murder bliss and convince others to do the same. That’s the elite athlete approach: Jam your magic sea chest full of wantings for a future life, or maybe a last-minute avalanche of abundance. Kudos to those people, but I prefer to have my bliss and eat it too. Right now.

Bliss gets easier the more we maybe. Maybe I could feel good. Maybe life rocks. Maybe MY life is amazing. Indulgence in optimistic maybes inevitably produces tangible evidence, and we begin a gradual transition to definitely. Somewhere between maybe and definitely, our bliss appears.

I’m pretty sure that’s the recipe. Show ourselves that the universe is ready to do backflips on our behalf, and everything conspires to help us have, be, and do whatever we want. Yep, whatever. That might feel scary. Are we going to go mad and run amok across the galaxy, like a Marvel meta-antagonist?

Mostly tho, that’s a plainly outrageous idea for some people, especially for those who’ve been deeply indoctrinated into the cult of struggle. Drinking the green soup made of people parts, like the scene from Conan the Barbarian. Orgies and debauchery notwithstanding, we don’t have to drink the green soup. Maybe by mentioning Conan and orgies, I’ll have diffused the resistance somewhat. WHY would the universe do backflips for insignificant you? How could it, that seems unscientific. We have to balk at this premise if we’re going to play the human game, right?

Games have rules, or, better stated, limits that define what is the game and what isn’t. The divinity game is kind of an expansion pack for the human game. Not everyone wants that expansion, and that’s… fine. Right now we’re playing the word game. Words aren’t the experience they describe. They are pointers and placeholders, maps of the territory. They are best deployed for goosing the imagination, which doesn’t really need much to get going in the first place. The imagination is the cockpit of a user-friendly cosmos; if you’ve flown one alien spaceship, you’ve flown them all.

I honestly have no idea whether these words can spark any imagination other than my own, but if yours has been sparked, then hurray! I’m only affirming what I already know, summarizing. The universe and I are already doin

Episode 110

Earth Dog

In our last Episode 109, Nothing, I coined the term elony, which roughly translates to virtuosity at letting the universe deliver epic outcomes. Practical application of arcane insights. In Episode 109, Nothing, I opined that Elon Musk seems like the most obvious embodiment of elony in our times. Seamus pointed out that Elon recently got into trouble for tweeting confusing / misleading information about Tesla, and the SEC smacked him down. So Elon can fuck up, which is good news. Since he is capable of making mistakes, he is likely human — just like us. He’s nothing special; just a guy who consistently tunes in to the larger part of himself AND seems to have compelling clarity about what he wants. Wanting is what I’d like to explore in the next couple of episodes. How to acknowledge what we want. Another word might be identify or even remember. We’re beginning a gentle segue out of the third season of the Daughter of Godcast, Summer Vacation, and back into our movie adventure. This is Episode 110, Earth Dog.

I might remind you that this podcast is about moviemaking, specifically making Daughter of God, a movie I wrote in 2005 and started shooting in 2006, 12 to 13 years ago. My first feature. How making this movie made me. Going from human being to being fully human.

Daughter of God, she is coming. Ever closer now, the Chinese year of the DOG wraps on February 4, 2019. Are there still lots of moving parts, adventures, and discoveries ahead? Oh yes, expect mucho manifesting in the next four months. With the end so close, I am ready to revel in what I want to experience while and when DOG gets done. What shape of completion feels the most exquisite? Emphasizing the experience of completion over the incidentals of completion (e.g., a feature film), is how we realize the best DOG ever. What do I want… to feel?

Desires. Aren’t they mysterious? How do we know what we want? Before we can follow our bliss, what is bliss? What is your compelling desire? Do you know? Would you like to know? Does knowing make a difference?

I’ve come to celebrate desire as the mechanism of reality creation. What we want is super important, vital, essential, the beginning of everything. To deny or ignore our desire is to douse the cosmic fires, short-circuit the glorious universe, and shut off the lights. Without powerful desire, we’re left groping in the dark.

Most of the turbulence associated with strong desire is the belief that dreams don’t come true. Or that they very rarely do unless we struggle and suffer — no pain, no gain. Even with hard work and perseverance, success is elusive.

Maybe the idea of hard work could be utter shite.

Maybe dreams coming true and struggle aren’t compatible, which is why dreams mostly don’t come true; we’ve been going about dreams coming true all wrong. What if the most effective dream-realizing action felt easy, even pleasurable — like calling on our full potential and getting a robust answer, or going deep into our resilience and flexibility, or having the delight and wonder of helping diverse elements fall perfectly into place.

We can’t invite our desires in and serve them biscuits and tea if we are fairly certain that no matter how hard we try desires are almost always thwarted. When trying and effort is the ONLY option, then desires have to stay outside where all the other dangerous wild things live.

Maybe the dreams-come-true recipe is strong desire coupled with confidence in the efficacy of great-feeling action. That IS the recipe, basically. Just for fun, pretend I’m telling the truth. That you now know how to make any dream come true. What desires would you let off the leash? What wild dreams would you dare to dream?

At first, this felt like a big leap for me to make. My transition to an effective dreams-come-true awareness is pretty far along now; the amazing, ecstatic completion of Daught