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Answered Sep 4 '13 at 22:19 Adam Wylie edited by John and Napoleon Wilson

Ah, the Wheel of Pain... The Wheel Of Pain can be an allegory, if you wish. It can be a mill or a torture device or just a clever creation by a writer to explain how Conan got his Hanz and Franz on. But I believe the Wheel Of Pain is what it is. It is real. It is pain. I mean, never ending pain and mind numbing boredom and madness until the wheel itself, or the cold or the heat or some illness or injury, finally stops the hell you're living and you drop dead in your chains. Free at last. It is what it is, a wheel. With slaves to push it. Round and around and around, day after day, month after month, lifetime after lifetime, ad infinitum. It is what it is. But why? To grind grain? Build muscles? Waste a lot of good slaves for no reason other than to waste them? No. The wheel is a brilliant device constructed by the War Masters in the East, where Conan is eventually taken to learn the "deepest secrets" of weapons and warfare.

The Riddle of Steel

Every now and then, the Wheel of Pain reveals its terrible purpose for existing. On a very rare occasion, the Wheel of Pain does not destroy and grind a man to death. Instead, it creates one. Creates a man into something that is harder and stronger than any weapon of steel. A man of incredible strength in body and mind. Of the flesh. Most men chained to the wheel will go insane or die of exhaustion or from the elements. Or both. But the War Masters knew that a rare few would become the answer, become the truth to the Riddle: "steel isn't strong, boy, flesh is stronger." The Wheel, the War Master's wagered when they constructed it, would create a man who could master his flesh. Master body and mind and thus, master fear and pain. If that happened, the man would be ready to take the next step towards the "deepest secrets."

Absolutely. Right on. Conan had something going on inside that let him survive the wheel, to eventually free himself from the wheel.

So much to discover. Through life, a smorgasbord of ideas is spread before us, and we might pile our plates high with ideas, self concepts, paradigms. The buffet of beliefs, what will we choose?

For me, an unhealthy idea I've learned to scrape into the compost is that desire equates to lack of something. When desire is actually an energy, a power.

I used to short circuit desire by starting to dream and then immediately comparing the dream to my current circumstance. Pushing against present circumstances. Resentment, despair. The wheel of pain.

Now I relish tasty desire, the celebratory tug of inspiration,  my creative imagination. Staying with the delight of - what if?

This morning, between sleep and waking, I held desire in my hand, examining the facets and levers, marveling at the possibilities. What a delicious feeling to finally get how this all works. Or maybe remember. This reality thing, manifestation, the whole shebang. What if you knew how the cosmos worked? Does that appeal to you?

Spoiler alert, here's the easy path to bliss. Cultivate robust appreciation for what's showing up right now while tapping into all the cosmic resources with audacious, ecstatic desire. We all already know this, but we tend to forget because that's how gods roll, and we're here to play the human game. I prefer to remember because I like choosing, knowing this is my choice, and an excellent choice at that. I decided to be Dan Kelly. I designed Dan Kelly and being the genius designer that I am, I know the most excellent surprises and boons are ahead of me, I'm just getting started. Pushing the wheel as a choice to become epic. Just like Conan.

So that was last night.

We've been auspiciously groping the last 4 episodes. I'm fairly fired up to be in the thick of improvisation. Once again we've been trailing off on sharing Daughter of God's past 12 years and amping up on making the now, together. There's still some of 2016 left to cover which we'll close out in the next episode or two. Before we fire up the time machine, I'm wanting to tease out the shine from last month of the podcast. Let's review.

057 was the last time we were in 2016. To be continued.

In 058, we talked about the world premiere of Thaw of the Dead and how a pretty decent indie feature needs to be way more than pretty decent, hence the distribution engine we're building for Daughter of God - with things you find around the kitchen.

Giving the global audience access is how DOG becomes the break out cinema experience we're all anticipating. Expanding on Hitchcock's paradigm, how the movie is experienced is the 5th making, (see episode 015 but especially the 2011 except in 028). We get to offer global audience access and we are, oh yes.

In 059, we looked at search engine optimization as a significant step towards offering global access. Preliminary competitive analysis hints at leaning the podcast towards guidance in the unguru sense, celebrating the universal human experience and not dwelling overmuchly on the geeky tech details of movie making. The SEO for dog.movie is just the latest distribution component, other components include establishing a robust web presence and social media beachhead, doing a year of weekly podcasting, raising funds for environmental protection, and dipping our toes into swag.

In 060, we made a pilgrimage to Wordcamp, to learn still more about the dog.movie web platform, WordPress. We tinkered with open source as utopian vision and confirmed two design learning curves to climb, SEO and CSS, in preparation for test screening in 2018.

In 061, Nicole Enger and I talked about how the Daughter of Godcast revived her career as a special effects make-up artist and movie maker. She received a coded symbolic transmission meant just for her and was reminded that there's no hero's journey without a little wrangling and flopping about. I discovered the podcast is keeping creative people in the fray, with both divine and pragmatic components. OK, so far so good.

I review these episodes because I want to emphasize that the future of this podcast and Daughter of God is a discovery. I didn't know 4 weeks back what next 4 episodes were going to be about, and that is why I'm enjoying sharing with you even more. As we complete this project, we'll be able to create summaries that have levels of specificity eg useful for movie makers, useful for all creatives, useful for humans generally. Because like Nicole said in 061, solving problems is what we all do, that's why we're here on Earth. We love to mix this up, get into jams, sort things out, make plans, fail miserably, get back up, kick ass, have breakthroughs, bite off more than we can chew, practice, get virtousic. That's the human game. That's Daughter of God.

You've been listening to episode 062, Summary. Are you feeling good? Because you are good, you are privy to some pretty cool shit in this podcast. Because we're tapping into our divinity. Episode 061, Nicole had revelation because of snails I filmed on North Manitou Island in 2005. We are all an interpenetrating wild energy web, packed with way more information than a 10k internets, and we can all browse the sum of creation anytime with our intuition. You can do this anytime, sans smartphone, pad or laptop. We are already the ultimate technology. Somewhere in your experience is a spark of pleasure, waiting to be fanned. No matter how bleak you might be feeling, burned down or torn up, still there's definitely a spark. Conan found his, you can too. Blaze, baby.

By the way, Shri Fugi Spilt is nominated for best supporting actor at the Terror Film Festival for my role as Russel, the inept leader of the survivors in Thaw of the Dead. I'm up against Stefan Boehm for his role as the conniving boss in Accountable. Way back in Episode 015, Felix Diaz of the Terror Film Festival sent me a t-shirt and a really sweet rejection letter for an early cut of DOG, so this is kind of special for me. Love!