Chapter 9. Getting On Together in the Findhorn Community
— Guy Thorvaldsen
The surrender refers ultimately to the very existence of the ego- self. It is not a tactical game, in which part of the self can be released to make the remainder more tenacious. Sometimes people whose energy remains centred in the ego-self delude themselves into thinking that they have made all the necessary changes. They re-consolidate resistance in other aspects of their personality. If such people stay at the Findhorn Foundation for long, they may receive very hard lessons. Eileen's inner voice comments:
Every soul along the spiritual path comes to a time when he is stripped of everything and stands before Me naked and in true humility. When that time comes, he finds that it is the end, for he has nothing. Yet it is when he has reached that point of complete nothingness that he becomes everything. That is when he finds Me, the Lord his God.... That is the turning point in his life. It may be a hard uphill struggle, but never will he want to turn back or choose the easy path… .He never gives up. His feet have been firmly planted on the path. He knows that he is no longer alone, that he can always seek Me and find Me. Together we will face the seemingly insurmountable and reach the heights. lam his ever present help. All he has to do is to ask. He is never refused help by Me. The more he turns to Me, finds Me, does everything with Me, the more aware he becomes of our Oneness. I never separate Myself from him.
(God Spoke to Me, p. 63)
One aspect of surrendering is a reduction in forward planning. The main emphasis is on the ongoing present rather than on the long-term future. As you surrender to the Divine Self anxieties about the future are reduced. Instead, life begins to unfold.
It is hard to accept this way of experiencing life when one thinks of the injustice and poverty in the world. Nevertheless, on a personal basis it works. You are the agent of transformation. Without your transformation, nothing can change. You are the key to the log jam. Even in the face of oppression, inner change comes first. Then you can be clear about how to act against it. Gandhi taught this lesson.
In the Findhorn Community we learn a view of life that is both simple and sophisticated. It is simple because we become less and less concerned with the common anxieties of old-fashioned living. After a long decision-making process, Brenda became a member. She sold her house, but bought a smaller one and rented it out, to have somewhere to go back to, 'just in case'. Now she is no longer worried. She knows that she will never go back to her old life; if the time comes to leave the Foundation, a new path will open up.
Ursula left Newbold for the States. After a series of adventures, she arrived almost penniless in Santa Fe, knowing that she needed some therapy to free her for her next steps. 'By chance' she found an extremely low-rent room in a beautiful part of town. She came into contact with a therapist who took a liking to her and offered her therapy sessions in exchange for help in the house. She was able to make some money baby-sitting. Recently, when her visa ran out, she returned here. "I don't know why I came," she said, "but my time at Newbold is finished." Nevertheless, she returned. At that moment two old friends who had also left arrived from Germany. 'By chance' Newbold was short of members and desperately needed help over the summer. In spite of her assertion, she accepted that for the time being she was supposed to be in Newbold again.
In our development different perspectives on life may coexist; at one moment we are calm and detached, understanding all; at another we feel hapless victims of inexplicable events. Part of the spiritual path involves learning to react appropriately to the levels of perception with which others are working. It doesn't do to tell a person who has just cut their finger in the kitchen that it is a lesson to teach the value of calmness under pressure. You need to get a bandage or give healing. One young man I knew tried to manipulate these different levels of explanation when he saw a woman who attracted him. "I'm sure we had a relationship in a past life," he would say. "You are certainly my soul mate!"
Nevertheless, it is often helpful to people who are struggling with problems to introduce them to a new perspective. Perhaps an observer can intuitively see a connection between spiritual growth and the meaning of particular events, more easily than the person involved. I use the method of viewing from a higher perspective very often, and very successfully, in counselling. The closer one comes to the Divine Self, the more appropriately one can respond, for it is the source of all knowledge.
The language of 'levels', of being able to view one's own personal experience as well as that of others from different — appropriate — perspectives, is one that has to be learnt. Ordinary means of communication are not sufficiently sophisticated for it. Sometimes visitors to the Findhorn Community are frustrated that a spade rarely seems to be called a spade. In apparent contradiction, we often seem childlike to outsiders. They are being introduced to an altered way of living.
As each new generation of members enters the Foundation, they experience a collective crisis of identity. Altered perceptions begin to impinge on old, established ways of thinking. This is often projected onto the community. "Why am I here? It's all too much!" becomes: "It's badly organised! Why don't we do things differently?" Members who have been here longer see this as a phase through which they too have been, and tend not to take it at face value. This view, in turn, makes it difficult to change things. Sometimes it feels as if one is dealing with cotton wool The community absorbs your ideas and they disappear. Nothing seems to change. A few months later someone else will have the same idea and suddenly it is accepted. This is a lesson in releasing personal identification with things and also a test in patience. Our civilisation is very impatient. God, however, is not.
Community meditations take place in weekly work department attunements, in fortnightly family meetings at the Park and Cluny, and at monthly community meetings. Every administrative meeting commences with a meditation.
It is beautiful to watch the community meditating together in the Hall. Of course, you can only do so if you arrive late and have to go into the viewing gallery! In these quiet moments comes a sense of our collective identity and of the dedication that each person, in their own way, brings.
The first requirement is: talk about it! People who don't have sufficient belief in their own self-worth to share their problems, or are too proud — another kind of insecurity — express them indirectly, undermining activities and relationships with others. On the other hand, some people with low self-esteem feel they can communicate with others only if they have problems, so they manufacture spurious ones constantly. At the Findhorn Foundation, there is always someone to listen to you. At first when I came I had a circle of 'special friends' who patiently bore my catalogue of woes. Now, although I am not particularly sociable and rarely seek an intimate exchange of confidences, I feel a great love for, and considerable trust in, all the members of the community. I can ask anyone for support in need, and I myself give it when asked. I do not always get the advice I want to hear, but if I knew what I needed to hear I would already have solved my problems.
When the problem is with someone else, mediation is often very helpful. It is always available. Jane's relationship with Tom was ending, but she was unwilling to recognise it. While she was away, Tom started a new relationship with Alice. Jane became furiously angry with Alice. She felt she should have consulted her before taking such a step. A couple of times she demonstrated her anger publicly. This upset Alice, who was a little afraid of her and felt defensive, although she was prepared to talk. Karen and Christine agreed to hear the problems and try to soothe wounded feelings. Finally, a meeting was arranged. Christine would 'hold the ring', assisted by Karen.
After an attunement, Jane had the chance to speak as long as she liked, uninterrupted. She shared her feelings and her own psychological background in relationships with considerable personal insight. Colouring all was her anger at the situation. Then Alice shared, cautiously, not wanting to get involved in Jane's feelings Christine and Karen made sure each one had the space to speak and be heard. Although the mutual mistrust was not resolved, the face-to-face contact in a supportive environment enabled life together in the community to continue.
For Jane, the end of the relationship dramatised old patterns which she knew she had to deal with, while Alice in her new relationship learned much about the need to express her feelings. Living in a small community demands that we find some way of dealing with difficult situations. You can't run away from them for long, when you are bound to see each other every day.
When we really transcend a difficulty, it ceases to be one. To do so requires changing the level of energy on which one lives. Spiritual counselling may help to give insight on what that looks like, and personal inner work, such as meditation, stabilises a new way of seeing things. The main danger in this is self-deception. A wish to be different may be substituted for actual change, with the result that unwanted behaviour is suppressed rather than transcended. One particular kind of tight, fragile identity bottles up a lot of psychological problems under a veneer of concepts of the good. In my spiritual counselling I often referred people to therapists to help them get in touch with similar psychological blockages.
At the end of the 1980s there are people qualified in Reichian, Gestalt and Bioenergetic therapies in the community, as well as co-counsellors and art therapists. Several members have some training in Psycho-synthesis. We learn not to be afraid of using these techniques to help us break through blocks, but we also discourage dependence on a weekly therapeutic 'fix'. More unusual therapeutic and transformation techniques are also available, such as clairvoyance, rebirthing and past-life regression. These can be described as 'changed awareness' techniques. In every case the quality of the support person, their ability to give total attention and their own degree of self-discovery are as important as the technique in providing support in change.
Living in the community provides access to a considerable amount of alternative medicine, from spiritual healing to herbalism, from acupuncture to foot reflexology And, when all else fails, we have an allopathic doctor. However, it is remarkable how much of the sickness in the community relates to two states of spiritual development: release and resistance. Examples of 'release illnesses' might be colds, stomach upsets, skin eruptions. Resistance often manifests as back problems, exhaustion or constipation. Our array of healers and masseurs soothes and supports ....
Personalities in transformation need a lot of love and support on all levels. We talk of preventive and corrective medicine, but the greatest growth area for new humanity may be 'supportive medicine' — people trained and spiritually developed enough to support others in the transition from outer-identified to inner-identified states. Each supporter also needs support, in a chain of mutual assistance. This has nothing to do with selfishness or self-indulgence. Buildings need scaffolding as they are being erected. Every human being learning to discover and express something of their divine reality needs an effective support system as the process unfolds. The meaning of new community is not living together communally — that has no intrinsic merit, although it may be valuable as an experience. It is the provision of an effective and practical mutual support system, for the 'building' of human self-discovery is never complete. We advise guests who visit us to try to build such a system when they return home.
In normal circumstances we change jobs quite frequently. It provides a new arena for experience, a new working group to get close to. Two years is perhaps the average length of time in a work group, but it is often less in service departments — kitchens, homecare, maintenance and gardens — and rather longer in some of the others. New members usually go into the service departments, while it is rare for members to work in the Guest Department or Personnel till they have been in the community at least two years.
At nine o'clock on Monday morning, I cycle down to the Phoenix shop — crafts, books and wholefoods (more recently expanded to sell almost everything). By five past all of us are there: Anna, who looks after the wholefood section; Ienek, who is learning to take over the crafts from Ingrid; Michael, who focalises and looks after the tapes; Katherine, who deals with mail order. Ian has also come. He is an LCG who works in the kitchen, but has a few shifts with us. There are a couple of Departmental Guests, Marianne and Paula. My job is to look after the books.
"Good morning; let's attune."We stand at the back of the shop in a circle, hands held, eyes closed.'Let's bless the shop, and invoke the angels of joy and efficiency for our work this morning," says Ienek. Everyone leads attunements in their own style. Anna and Ienek bring in the angels. I like to talk about the God within. Ingrid does it silently. Michael loves the inner contact of an attunement, and he holds hands longest of all. When he's in a good mood, he's never in a hurry; it calms us down.
We sit down for a little while to welcome the new arrivals. Marianne is from Germany — she's an art teacher, who wants a time away from the shop to paint in the art studio. Paula is young, English and enthusiastic. What do we seem like in their eyes? Confident, joking, relaxed perhaps. On another day it can be very different. Anna and I could be quarrelling, Ienek and Ingrid arguing over the crafts, Michael getting irritated trying to make the cash balance, and Katherine behind with the mail orders. Then we'll know the weekly attunement will be 'heavy'.
The weekly attunement takes place on Tuesday morning. The shop is closed and we have time for personal sharing and a meditation, as well as larger issues of shop business. We always sort things out by the end of the attunement.
This morning everyone is in a good mood, so our short introductions are cheery. Ian vacuums the shop, and Ienek washes the floor after him. Katherine is getting rid of cardboard boxes, while Michael empties the wastepaper bins. The guests are tidying up the bookshelves after the weekend's sales. It leaves Anna free to start making up the week's food orders, and I check off book cards from books sold in the last two days. Ingrid is looking over some greetings cards that have arrived from Germany. By 10 o'clock, when we open, everything 'out front' is tidy and clean.
We light a candle and put some music on. Everyone has a different taste in music. I get fed up with the folksy, Scottish dance music Ienek puts on. She can't stand the way-out meditation music that I like; the bass notes do something to her stomach. I only play it when she's not on shift. Michael noticed that each person sells tapes of the music that they like; it doesn't seem to be so much to do with customer demand as with salesperson's pleasure!
Katherine's head is bent over her desk now. She is older than the rest of us. Sometimes she is like mother, and we are the squabbling kids; at other times, when there are a lot of orders and she is behind, she can be short and irritable, too. I use her as a reference. If I'm trying to hide something or not be quite honest, I have the feeling she'll see it. So she scares me a little, but is very helpful for my integrity....
Anna has taken over the till. It's a nice job because, except in the high summer months when we're very busy, there are periods when only members are using the shop. You can have a little chat and hear what's going on. It's fun to watch the guests, too, what they head for, how their eyes light up at certain things. There are the jewelry people, who can't resist little silver Goddess earrings; the 'inspirationals', who proudly demonstrate the special spiritual books they've sorted out; and the 'diet junkies', who raid our shelves for vitamins A, B, C and K, fortified with magnesium salts. People in a shop are simple and lovable. Behind their adult sophistication, the little child saying, "Mummy, I want. .. !" is very close to the surface. Maybe there's a very serious 'spiritual' person, conscious of his image, who can be humanised by being tempted with a bar of our famous chocolate. Or a bangle-hunter who walks out with a book on personal growth. Such are the little triumphs of running a spiritual shop.
In no time at all the lunch break has come. We close at 12 noon, so those who want to can go to the community meditation at 12.15. Lights go out, the last customer leaves, and the 'open' sign turns to 'closed'. We come into the circle again for a short attunement, this time at the front of the shop. As I close my eyes, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for being able to spend my time with such wonderful people. Ian, quiet and precise, will take over from me one day. Once he came in overflowing with restrained joy, to tell us he had started a relationship; the pleasure, pain and vibrancy of being in love. Ienek, slowly opening the creaky door of her exquisite self. Anna, symbol for me of perfect femininity, with whom I identified much too closely for our friendship to be comfortable. Michael, thoughtful and punctilious, holding the reins of our unruly group without ever being a boss.... Each person mirroring me, holding me back, supporting me in the complex enterprise of self-unfolding.
"Don't be romantic! Stop weeping!" says my inner, reasonable self. But, as usual, involuntary tears come trickling down. Such moments of revelation are infinitely precious. When we are next having our dramas together, they will be the reality that brings us through. Time to go off to sanctuary and give thanks.
Winter is also the time of our internal conference, when the whole membership comes together and shares. We discuss our vision, our next steps, our collective challenges. In 1988, the year the new Core Group was formed, we agreed to experiment with special spiritual groups, which would meet regularly, developing our understanding of the meaning of inner work. Some of the groups are still meeting and A Course In Miracles is a popular work book.
The main function of the internal conference is to bring us all together after the hectic summer period and the conference for guests. This time always seems to me too short. The community is full of 'characters' and at conference time we are all 'on display. Standard stars will get up and say their piece; maybe some new attraction will catch collective interest. We know each other and smile together knowingly. Human beings in spiritual development do not become uniform 'masks of God', with saintly smiles. On the contrary, as the common element of love unfolds itself in each of us, endless permutations of individual expression develop. Interested and lively people are varied people.
Twice a year, in the 1980s, we have welcomed the 'Mastery' workshop to the community. Whenever it takes place, it is full. Many LCGs also take part. The Mastery is a workshop originally developed for actors. All community members have constantly to interact with guests, to focalise them in the various work departments, to talk with them, assist them, answer their requests. One has to have a degree of self-confidence and the Mastery helps provide this. Participants give a performance in front of forty or fifty others. Over an exhausting weekend, long hours, late nights, the experience develops, helping people to express, and not suppress, feelings and identities.
The Game of Transformation is played at all seasons of the year, though there is more time for it in the winter. Little groups of earnest-faced people appear at lunch, ostentatiously separating themselves from the rest of us — during the game you are not supposed to mix with the hoi polloi.
It is in winter, basically, that members get their annual ration of therapy, group consciousness and spiritual development workshops, emerging reinforced and clear for the summer influx.We are activists, even in our inward times, and quietness is relative. But I like to get away for a week, to Traigh Bhan, our retreat house on Iona, or to Erraid, where the Erraid family also gives us a chance to retreat. There you can spend time in meditation; take long walks across the wild rock and moor of the Scottish west coast; or curl up in front of a fire on the long evenings reading a spiritual classic or a detective story — according to your taste. Onone such retreat, alone over Christmas at Traigh Bhan, fasting for a week, I learned the real wonder of meditation — that it is not a time of passivity, but one of shining stillness. All the senses are sharpened, peacefulness enters like a swan and a quiet joy can become so intense that the heart feels it will burst. Many people are afraid of such times, for they do not like to be alone, but the companionship of God is incomparable. The Findhorn Community way of life has a great deal to offer to a confused world ....
Can we be sure, in such emotionally charged realms, that we can trust inner guidance to be anything more than self-justification? When I fell in love with another member of the community, I had clear guidance not to turn it into a sexual relationship — guidance which I wilfully ignored, causing both of us much pain. It is, frankly, a difficult area, made more complex by the Western ideal of romantic love as the basis of relationship. In countries such as India, where partnerships are arranged, marriage is a phase of life, to be learned from or endured. Over the years love may grow out of companionship; sexuality is not so strongly emphasised. In the West, we now resist strongly the idea that parents should have a major say in our choice of partner. We dream of an ideal relationship, usually with a strong sexual basis. But immature people with very high expectations and in an intense state of sexual arousal are rather unlikely to hear a soft inner 'yes' or 'no'. Many people experiment with several relationships and trial marriages.
Sociologists have long pointed out that the old, extended family system has been undermined in our geographically mobile society. Many children nowadays find themselves being brought up by a single parent, usually a woman. Even in a couple relationship, with family size so small the emotional intensity of the parent-child relationship is very great. It reproduces itself in needy adult identities. Children, while loved and welcomed, mean a marked reduction in family standard of living and tend to disrupt neat, status-satisfying environments. They demand love and affection above material things till they learn to express love through them. Everything is coloured by the miasma of commercialised sexuality.
All this gives a sense of instability and uncertainty in relationship. It simply no longer works to superimpose a classical image of moral fidelity. In this sphere also, a divinely connected human identity is a precondition for the development of more mature, less ephemeral relationships.
There is, however, yet another complication. As one opens to Self, there come intense experiences of the beauty of other people; divine moments of unconditional love. Emotional identity, less developed, may try to translate these moments into sexual attraction. Because of this there is a clear rule at the Findhorn Foundation that focalisers may not enter into a sexual relationship with a member of a guest group with whom they are working. A focaliser who transgressed this rule recently was asked to leave the Guest Department. Members, like everyone else, come to the Foundation with identities formed in our civilisation's maelstrom of sexual uncertainty. Relationships form and break up, just as everywhere else. It is one thing to affirm that each relationship is a learning experience for the partners involved, but unless there is some evidence of learning, such statements can be facile ego-justifications masquerading as wisdom. In no area is it more apparent that we are not realised human beings but explorers.
What is clear is that relationships based on hypocrisy or unresolved problems never go unchallenged in the community. The energy of transformation here will not allow it. A couple with a very long-standing marriage and grown up children are in crisis. They are having to work through a legacy of unresolved and evaded problems… Since almost all relationships have elements of such problems in them, challenge exists for everyone in this area. A number of our members have come here after, or on the verge of, divorce. A few find a sublimation of sexuality in their spirituality but, for most, relationship is still a major life area, either in the having or in the seeking. We ran a workshop called 'Towards Sexual Wholeness' in 1989. Members attended the trial run with excitement; for a few weeks afterwards there were little 'sexuality groups' around the community, discussing what it had brought up.
As everywhere else, changes in relationship bring about problems for children. But for children born here, or brought up here from a young age, the community provides a very powerful support system. Parents retain the primary responsibility for their children, but the children learn that they can ask for support from any adult. They grow up in a loving atmosphere. There are small childcare support groups run mainly by mothers, a summer programme for toddlers, a play group, and kindergartens in the Steiner school. The atmosphere is much more that of the old-fashioned extended family than of isolated nuclear family units. Awareness and psychological understanding are, however, much more developed than in traditional extended families. For instance, in cases of parental strain or separation, children observe both parents being supported, and neither condemned.
Members cannot walk away from difficulties in a small community. Help and love are withheld from no one in trouble. Because of this, crisis resolution and release proceed very quickly indeed, on the whole.
As in other areas of life, in regard to relationship our civilisation has created transitional identities no longer bound by custom and currently pulled hither and thither by commercial, social and sexual demands and stimuli. Working towards responsibility in relationship involves a much more sophisticated understanding of the interaction of love, emotion and commitment than we are yet able to demonstrate. To learn this understanding in practice is not easy. I believe that humanity nowadays should not be judged too harshly in its confusions. Here in the Findhorn Community we are making immense efforts to bring awareness into all aspects of our lives. The emphasis at present is on personal integrity, expressed as 'I have to be true to my feelings'. Another kind of integrity, 'I am mature enough to be responsible for my actions', is a stage beyond this. But it is no use pretending that one has reached a point that one has not.
Whatever their future may be, we still love marriages at the Findhorn Community and celebrate them in the present, as joyful occasions. Couples design their own ceremonies; the Hall, the gardens, power points, sacred dancing and ritual connections are much used. Wedding dresses have not gone out of fashion. The ceremonies are mutually created by the couple, with no trace of imposed formality. On such occasions there is a collective outpouring of love and affection among us which is innocent rather than naive. Although the community is overwhelmingly heterosexual, we accept relationship between people of the same sex without hesitation, where there is a feeling that love rather than ideology or exhibitionism is the basis of the tie. We had a most moving blessing of a relationship between two women not long ago; their partnership over a number of years had been a model of commitment and awareness of personal freedom in a couple situation. During the appreciations of the couple at the ceremony a woman remarked, "Girls, what taste! Your hem lines are exactly equal!"
In this transitional time, the most crucial relationship of all is the one with the God within, the Divine Self. By giving priority to this relationship in the Findhorn Community, we are working towards a new human identity — loving, aware, humorous, humane. Children brought up by adults with such an identity grow up more stable, less needy, more self-confident. Their way of relating to each other will emerge as a more mature human practice. We are just at the beginning of this aspect of social reorganisation, experiencing the dilemmas of trying to bring spirituality into the demanding area of relationship.
The acoustics of the Hall are very good. Sometimes the BBC uses it to televise recitals, giving us the chance to hear the best of classical music. The Aberdeen Youth Festival annually sends us a choir and a dance group from somewhere in the world. Our own Hall group scouts around the theatre scene to find performances which make sure we don't stifle culturally. Recent examples include 'Antigone' by Sophocles and an evening of 'Tales from the Arabian Nights', read delightfully by a professional actor — supported by one of our own belly dancers. Dancers from Poland and California were here the other week. Kathakali, an extraordinary music and dance group from South India have visited us twice to give us a taste of the Mahabharata, and so on. A film club satisfies escapist wishes by providing old American movies once a week.
Findhorn Community audiences are famed for their enthusiasm. When the BBC brought up an a-capella black group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, for a concert, we ended up dancing all around the television cameras on the stage, a scene joyfully filmed by the BBC technicians and shown on the televised programme.
Two Sacred Dance groups also meet regularly in the Hall. In addition, there is a free dance group, an African dance group and, of course, Jane Fonda workouts. The theatre group recently took a performance to the Edinburgh Fringe. The Ceilidh Band entertains at every opportunity. As far as the written word is concerned, the weekly internal newspaper, 'Rainbow Bridge', is full of poems, jokes, meeting minutes and more or less spiritual comment. For public circulation we produce a high-quality quarterly magazine, One Earth (later taken over by a group of individuals. Sadly, it no longer exists.).
Sometimes, on a Friday night, we have a 'Sharing'. It is an informal occasion when members and guests can share their talents. Quality varies, but we guarantee to provide a supportive audience even for the most mediocre, if they're willing to try. Some of our own members and some of the guests give performances of high quality.
In the winter, Cluny's comfortable lounge comes into its own, with groups sitting round the fire to have a singsong or tell stories. Similar events happen at Newbold, and from time to time Native-American-style sweat lodges were organised in the garden there. There is a hill-walking group and, on New Year's Day at noon, a polar bear swim in the North Sea, which I always watch!
As a community we do not emphasise ritual — performed by Westerners it is often derivative and forced. But we try to be aware of the changing seasons, with monthly full moon meditations and quarterly solstice celebrations.
In June 1989, we gathered in Cullerne gardens for the Summer Solstice. The evening sun shone from a clear, brilliant sky, chiselling the finest details of the forested hills to the south. After a short wait, someone announced that the focaliser of the event wasn't coming. His father had been taken ill with cancer and he was meditating in the sanctuary. Instead, members from Newbold started the evening with Native American chanting. More and more people turned up, till there were more than 200 — members, guests, associates — holding hands in a great circle around a fire. Someone brought her accordion and led some sacred dances. Then we each ceremonially threw a piece of wood on the fire, symbolically releasing the past and praying for the future.
The water of the bay shone azure and golden in the setting sun. In these perfect surroundings the simple ritual became magical, transcending its form. We opened the circle so the two fires — the great fire of the sun and the little bonfire — could merge in a blaze of golden light. So it is as God finds Himself in us....
Another memorable ritual took place on the day of the Harmonic Convergence in August 1987. We planted more than a hundred 'peace poles' inscribed in different languages. On that day, for the first and only time, the dolphins who live in the Moray Firth entered the Findhorn Bay at high tide, an occurrence so unusual that it was on local radio and in the papers. Was it only a coincidence that they came on that day, never before or since? Such signs remind us that the community is still blessed.
Life at the Findhorn Community is challenging, stimulating, varied and vibrant. It is impossible to be bored unless you have momentarily lost your inspiration. I emphasise this in order to show that a relatively isolated community of between two and four hundred people does not need to sink into either rural apathy or urban despair.