Echoing

We are in the month of Echoing, and I feel
tingly excitement and an almost overwhelming vastness of possibility
somewhere between thrill (I want to dance!)
and apprehension (I want to hide!)
an entire colony of butterflies inside me
oh wow this big newness this intensity of feeling

And so here is a grounding stone to skip
something to reverberate…

What do I want to echo?

What do I want to echo?

Clarity. Resonance. Spark. Presence: I am here.

Presence like grounded awe and grace, like a glowing ray of light and this breath now.

And presence like panther presence. Something striking and powerful and vitally alive.

Answers and questions.

What else about echo?

Echo like clap back. Echo as community.

This is related to my wishes about companionship and about legacy. I want people to play with in self-fluency, as equals, I don’t want to be the teacher or the guru or the one in the front of the room.

And I want the fullness of my [body of work] to be documented, to exist in one place, in a clear form. That way people can throw themselves into study and play without needing me at all, they can go as deep as they like, to take as much or as little as they want in a given moment.

What else do I know about this?

Mmmmm. I kind of like how this particular flavor of wish as stated above doesn’t answer my biggest (current) question.

Ha, current questions. That is a lovely double meaning. Questions that are of this moment right now, and questions that have spark, a powerful charge, and questions of funding and currency.

Let’s investigate this BCQ (Biggest Current Question), and invoke all the superpowers of current and flow.

Noticing…

My intention in writing this wish was to reveal some clarity on my biggest question (BCQ!), but it turns out that my wise wish knows how to sidestep that question with elegance and grace….

So here’s to all the superpowers of the Graceful Sidestep, which is itself an important principle in the practice of self-fluency and very interior design.

My BCQ —biggest! current! question! — until very recently at least, was this, or at least I thought it was:

Should I stay or should I go? After nearly twelve years of this business and the past four impossibly hard years, what happens next?

This might be a monster question but it’s still a question: let’s say I devote the next year as planned to Last Experiments in discovering if it is possible to make this business a sustainable enterprise, and it doesn’t work, what then?

Or would it make more sense to go get a job-job for a while in something I happen to be very good at — for example, copywriting, editing, marketing for anyone who is not me — and find out what it’s like to not be on the edge?

If I go into logic-mind…

Alright, the latter is definitely not 120% yes. I know this from experience: when I give up on a true yes and take a long meandering side path that might point me in that direction eventually, I end up just losing sight of my spark.

And once my actual yes is out of sight, I invariably compromise on a medium-yes. Or I get sucked into the day-to- day bullshit of the rigged game and forget to check in with my new true yes of the present moment.

On the other hand, as we were forced to get very clear on last week, it is also not my yes to keep the business afloat at my own expense, which at this point isn’t something I can do anymore even if I wanted to.

But/and: Logic-mind isn’t where the answer to this lives. Logic-mind is just where I grind wheels and get lost in pros-and-cons of on the one hand and on the other hand. This is just fiddling details, and they aren’t even necessarily grounded in true yes.

The actual answers (or, better: the clues) live in truth-mind, that is: turning inward, getting quiet, immersing in body-heart-mind knowing. Truth-mind offers me something else entirely.

What does truth say? What does wise, loving, patient Incoming Me say?

(1) It isn’t about staying or going at all.

It doesn’t matter what you do, Havi Bell, because either way, your yes is to catalogue and preserve your legacy. Your legacy is what you want to echo. It is your bell. It is the work of your life and it is time to let it come into form.

So whether you stay and devote yourself to the well-being of the gallery or you seek external support in the form of [salary], or any other option, this is your beacon. Resonate.

(2) It’s time to allow what you live to be downloaded into form.

When this legacy is in place, you can absolutely stay and play if that is your yes, which it may well be. We still feel sparks there. We still have great love for community and play.

Or maybe you will then wish to pursue a new yes calling to you, but either way, your body of work is asking to be preserved in form, this is your devotion, your desire, your unique contribution to the universal sea of shared wisdom.

Legacy is what lives beyond. Putting your focus here solves all questions of doors of entry versus doors of exit. This is what you wish to echo. So let it echo through you.

(3) You have spent the past two years learning about freedom.

Freedom as spiritual quality and the freedom in letting go of [oh pretty much everything]. Creative freedom and more freedom in your days, the treasure of freedom in relationships. Even freedom in dance, a very specific kind of freedom that comes from form, technique, discipline, intention and big wild presence.

Now the time has come to learn about a new freedom.

You need to not only learn about but prioritize financial freedom — or, really, for right now just some form of financial afloat-ness to get you through the period of Preserving Legacy aka allowing it to come into form.

Because that’s the only way you can document the collection of what you know, not just as blog posts of concepts and ideas here and there, but the body of work.

You can’t do this the way you are living now where your resources of attention go to where you will be staying when and for how long, and living on miracles.

It is time to prioritize stability. You need a better foundation for your work of echoing. Ask for it and expect it.

I sit with this and skip some stone questions…

Me: Okay, interesting. So essentially, we just need something to pay the bills and hold down the fort while I document [Legacy]. That something can be the Friends of Museum option, when we let that into the world. Or a new foundation. Or possibly that something is a new solution I haven’t met yet.

And then this legacy either allows for a new way to have a business, a way for the Gallery to be self-sustaining, or it lets me to find some new way to support myself while still knowing that the library of my work lives on.

That is useful to know. It still doesn’t alleviate my monster-fears of What If It Doesn’t Work. It is a start though.

Wisest me: I honestly don’t think it matters. There isn’t a time limit.

Me: How can you say there isn’t a time limit when we are out of funds? Even with being vulnerable and asking, and this amazing outpouring of love and support, it’s still only enough to make it a few more months. There clearly is a limit but you say there isn’t.

Wisest me: There isn’t.

Me: I don’t get it.

Wisest me: Everything you are going through is legitimate, my bell love, all the apprehension, pain, fear, excitement, passion, all of it. It all makes sense and it is all temporary and it is all just right.

And you are quite correct that yes, on the physical plane of course there are limits, even the most basic one: one day we will cease to exist in this body form. The time will come for the long nap. And, at the same time, that’s not the only plane.

There is also another truth, a truth that says there is time, there is plenty of [everything you need], there are beautiful surprise solutions emerging in every instant, and there is treasure and power and grace in this breath now, yes, in this moment of not knowing.

Wisest-me in a moment of channeling truth.

Receive the treasure of this moment of recognizing something true:

In order for you to do your work in this world, you need resources. This is a vital piece of truth that you’ve been neglecting in your passionate dedication to your work: you need to be supported, it is vital for you to have what you need in order to create, because what is creating if not being a clear channel.

When you recognize this, when you decide that it matters to have your day to day needs met in order to do your best work, this is also part of your legacy. More important than you know even.

Decide that it is important that you get paid, in one form or another. Prioritize that before all else, and focus on this now, because this is about harmony, truth-love, congruence, right relationship, and taking care of yourself. These are the important things of life.

You curate one of the most magical galleries on the planet, and doing this requires that you are able to access your state of creative genius, your wisest knowing. And if the gallery owner is constantly dealing with stuff like keeping the heat on in the winter, she cannot do her big creative magic.

If you are going to model what you teach, if you want to be a beacon of self-fluency, you need to prioritize your own well-being, you need to be done with letting the edge be your normal.

Back and forth.

Me: But that’s not why I want to document my legacy.
Wisest-me: Of course not. That is what will allow you to let your legacy take the form it wants to take.
Me: Okay, but I don’t even know how to do this.
Wisest-me: You don’t have to know yet. That’s not the point of wishing, babe. The point of wishing is to reveal your yes, let it be named with love, while creating the safest possible environment in which to want what you want.
Me: I really want a solution though. I feel impatient.
Wisest-me: I get that. It will be here. For now, commit to the wish and the wishing. This is a wish about Legacy, and making sure you have the resources to document your legacy is part of the beautiful glow-spark of the wish!

What else do I find inside my wish?

Hopefulness.
Receptivity.
Spark.
Excitement.

An overflowing thank you heart for the magnificence of all of it: everything that has come through me so far, all the incredible people who are here to play and celebrate with me. I cannot thank you enough, everyone who has given something to the cause. I have been crying all weekend with amazement about how many people care.

Looking forward to Six Month (Virtual) Rally/Retreat, even if monsters are doubtful about whether this can buy enough time for the mission of Legacy. I am excited about everything I am currently writing, the gallery, positive change.

I want to trust that clarity is enough, and that whatever emerges from this wish will be so beautiful, so right, and, like every other wish I have wished here in all these years of wishing, it will point me with love to the next step.

Anything else about my wish?

It feels almost unbearably vulnerable
(which, hey, that’s how wishes work sometimes)
to share about this at all
I don’t know what else I want to make safety around it
or what I want to do with this wish.

Other than wish it and
release it into the world.

382 weeks.

That is how long I have been writing weekly wishes here.

They have all come true in some form,
because they are true,
because they launch me towards my truth,
and because I do not ask for candyland bullshit,
my ask is always about process and discovery,
learning about my relationship with the essence of what I want,
calling in the qualities that will help me embody it.

One day, maybe as part of the work of legacy,
I will revisit all the past wishes and
see just how much love-joy-magic-power they have glowed into the world.

invitation: come play with me…

you are invited to share this post and to share many !!!!!! about what is here,
or share appreciation or anything sparked for you while reading

deposit wishes, gwishes, superpowers, qualities, ingredients, intel, possibly in code

safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving

wishes are never late because whenever you wish is the right time for wishing

we remember that people vary and my wishes don’t have to be yours, each process is unique, and this is a good thing

here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: with great kindness and appreciation and awe, whispering (and sometimes shouting) oh, wow what beautiful wishes

♡