In the early days, the Findhorn Foundation was known locally as ‘that mad bunch of hippies on the hill’ and allegedly referred to by the Home Office as Harmless Eccentrics, or simply ‘HE’ in their official files. But a lot has changed over the last decade. Recently dubbed ‘ahead of its time’ by the Guardian, the world-renowned intentional community near Inverness in Scotland is now widely accepted as a pioneering community in permaculture, sustainable-energy production and the cultivation of mindfulness.
The three ‘founders’, Eileen Caddy, Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean, had fallen on hard times, or so the story goes, and were forced to live in caravans on the outskirts of a village called Findhorn. Through following their ‘inner guidance’ and listening to the ‘intelligence of nature,’ they managed to grow a bountiful garden of miraculous proportion. Tales of the 40 lb cabbages and roses that bloomed in the snow travelled for thousands of miles, and listeners flocked from as far as Australia and California to join the community that now boasts 250 permanent members.
I was pointed in the direction of the Findhorn Foundation (hereafter, simply Findhorn) by a friend, on the promise that I should ‘expect a miracle’ as per their slogan, but with little else by way of explanation. Excited by the prospect of my first jaunt into the New Age spiritual world, I picked up the phone and booked myself in for an experience week.
Travelling an hour north of Inverness, I pass endless fields of vivid green, old Presbyterian churches and small isolated villages made of crudely cut stone. As the train sways from side to side, I speculate about the people I will meet, the smell of incense and damp wool conjuring its way into my nostrils, accompanied by images of long beards and rainbow dresses.
After a short taxi ride from Forres railway station, I arrive at Cluny – an imposing grey-stone building that houses forty members of the Findhorn community – and am shown to my shared room on the first floor. There is no lock on the door, but the room is comfortable enough, and I am pleasantly surprised to find running water and central heating.
Before I even have time to don leather sandals and make a burdock-root tea, I am summoned to the Beech Tree Room to meet my fellow course attendees.
Huge south-facing bay windows flood the room with light as we arrange ourselves on mustard chairs around a forest of white candles. A hodgepodge of age, gender and nationality, the group are dressed in everything from fleeces and jeans to brightly coloured cotton dresses and woolly tights. Closer to stereotype, in a flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, a gentle middle-aged man with a bushy white beard stands up.
‘Hello, everybody,’ he says in a soft Yorkshire accent. ‘I am Paul, and this is Gabriella,’ he points to a petite, elven-looking lady wearing a billowy dress and wooden jewellery. ‘We will be your focalisers for the week.’
He continues, ‘Now, as is customary here, we will “tune in” to each other.’ He puts his hands out in front of him in prayer position. ‘I want you to place your palms together, put your thumbs to the right, then reach out to both sides and hold hands with your neighbours.’
Shit. I don’t know why this was so unexpected; of course hippies hold hands. I take a deep breath and reach out for the hands either side of me. To my right is a middle-aged, tall man in a loose cotton shirt. His hands are large and cool. To my left is a younger man, perhaps in his early twenties with spiky ash-blond hair. His hand is warm and a little damp. He gives me a nervous smile.
‘Now,’ Paul continues, ‘I want you to work on bringing yourselves to the present and feeling for the energy of the group; try to connect to it. Once you feel fully connected, pass a squeeze around the group to indicate that we are all here.’
Feel the energy? Hmmm. The only thing I feel right now is incredibly self-conscious. I close my eyes and try to lose myself in the sensation of my hands, feeling for the alleged energy. It doesn’t work, and before long, my hand is squeezed by the tall man to my right. I pass the pressure along like a fraud and am relieved when we get to break the circle.
Gabriella stands up. ‘Now you are all invited to share with the group,’ she says in a hushed American lilt, pausing for a drawn-out, enlightened smile. ‘Sharing means to speak openly about your feelings, and it’s a big part of life here at Findhorn. You each have about five minutes to talk, introduce yourself and tell us what brought you here.’
Jumping in early, keen to get this over and done with, I explain that I am here to learn what life is like in an intentional community and tell the group about my decision to write this book, to remove my blinkers and open my mind. I tell them that I have always been interested in a more community-focused way of living, but that my corporate life seems to have taken me down a different path, to the point that I haven’t met a single neighbour in my London apartment building. I wonder out loud if this way of living has also washed away some of what made me unique in my earlier life: the creativity I had as a child, the zest for life and the oneness I had always felt with nature, having grown up surrounded by animals. Out of nowhere, my voice starts to shake, and I have an overwhelming urge to cry. I realise that I have never spoken so openly to a group of complete strangers before and breathe a sigh of relief when my time is over, feeling exposed and vulnerable.
The sharing of the group is tinged with tragedy. A few members have recently lost a loved one, or been sick themselves, and hope that coming here will inspire life in them again. Most have known about Findhorn since the seventies and had felt a ‘calling’ to come here ever since. I am impressed with how emotionally articulate everyone is, seemingly far more comfortable in this exposing environment than I am.
The young man to my left reveals himself as Max, who has travelled here from Germany, and the tall gent to my right introduces himself as Sten from Denmark. His voice is deep and calm, as if harbouring all the wise secrets of the earth. I like him a lot. The more everybody talks, the more I like them too. Maybe they aren’t so strange after all.
At the end of our session, Paul points at the flickering candle. ‘Now we will all tune out,’ he says, reaching his hands out to the group as we re-form the circle. ‘And we will all blow the candle out together. Who shall we send its light to?’ he asks.
I have no idea what he is talking about. One of the group steps forward. ‘Can we send it to a dear friend I recently lost, please?’ Paul smiles and closes his eyes, gesturing for us all to blow together.
After a lunch of salad, pulses and rice cakes, we are given a tour of The Park, home to around a hundred community members. I feel as if I have somehow wandered onto the set of The Hobbit as we walk past homes made from whisky barrels, eco-houses with grass roofs, log piles, compost mounds, shrines, wood carvings, wicker arches, overflowing brightly coloured flower borders and magnificent sprawling trees. Birds chirp, and the air is thick with wood smoke. As we walk, I am flooded with a strange sense of nostalgia, as if I have stepped into my own imagined memory of a simpler time. It feels romantic, and I feel a pang of belonging, as if I have somehow come home. I’ve probably just read too much Tolkien.
The community strives to be entirely self-sustaining, we are told, as we are shown around the printing press, pottery shop, weaving studio and candlestick workshop. The group smile serenely as we walk, sharing observations of our new surroundings. One of the women stops to smell a beautiful purple flower, closing her eyes for longer than I would ever find comfortable.
As we walk, our tour guide explains how the community functions.
Each foundation member is expected to work thirty-five hours a week in a service department – gardening, kitchen, maintenance, etc. – and in exchange is provided with all of their basic living needs, plus £50 a week. I think about how much of my pay cheque goes on rent, bills and food living in London and decide that £50 of expendable income each week doesn’t actually sound that bad.
The main sources of income for the community are the workshops, experience weeks and other spiritual courses that run for fifty weeks of the year. Vegetarian meals are grown and prepared on-site, and eaten together in the community centre, and there are daily meditations and spiritual chanting as well. Waste is managed by tanks of living organisms (apparently snails eat poo – who knew?), and three huge wind turbines take care of the community’s energy needs.
At the end of our tour, we stop off to visit the nature sanctuary, a meditation dome built from dry stone covered in heather. We are here to pick our Angels to guide us on our path over the next week. Of course we are.
‘The Angel cards represent qualities we all have,’ Paul explains as we all settle onto small cushions scattered around the floor. ‘The Angel you choose will tell you what you need to focus on this week.’
Paul instructs us to wait until we feel a calling to a particular card and then reach forward and pick it up. On the flip side of that card is the name of our Angel.
The first person to pick is a dry-witted Australian who has already proved to be a bountiful source of laughs and entertainment for the group. She leans forward and picks a card on the opposite side from where she is sitting. Flipping it over, she reveals the Angel of Humour. The group share knowing looks as the atmosphere becomes noticeably more intense. I remind myself not to get sucked in, recalling my distrust of horoscopes. I cannot make these cards relevant just because I want them to be.
Next up is an endlessly smiling lady who has just been through a ‘rebirthing’ process, which she had meticulously explained to us over lunch. She picks the Angel of Birth.
Next, a concert pianist who has journeyed to Findhorn to kick-start a new life after a difficult divorce, picks the Angel of Awakening.
The more people make their selections, the more I find myself being drawn in. I just can’t help it.
Then it comes to me. I am not sure if I feel drawn or just that I should go sooner rather than later. I lean forward, pick up a card and flip it over. Staring back at me is the Angel of Understanding. What better Angel to guide me through a year of exploring the different paths people have chosen than the Angel of Understanding? This can’t be a coincidence, surely? She is perfect, I think, completely ignoring my own advice about getting drawn in. I look closer at the picture of her and… holy shit… she is reading a book!
I guess I am becoming quite accustomed to the hand-holding thing, because when we all pile into the Old Ballroom to close our first day with a session of ‘sacred dancing’, I surprise myself by finding it both fun and relaxing. At first, we all smile like idiots to hide our embarrassment as we shuffle around in circles holding hands, our bodies moving from side to side together as if one organism, but after the first few songs the awkwardness wears off, and by the end of the two-hour lesson my cheeks ache from smiling.
Even after one day here I feel like a part of myself I didn’t know existed has been ignited: the part of me that feels instead of thinks. I watch this group of adults skipping around in a circle, swaying and looking into each other’s eyes to the dulcet tones of Enya, and impulsively decide to try and incorporate the hand-holding and circle-dancing thing with my friends next time I see them. Perhaps in a fancy restaurant or bar during a night out. I have such lucky friends.
*
An incense stick burns in the corner as I walk into the 8 a.m. meditation in The Park the following morning. The group are positioned around a candle in the dimly lit Sanctuary. Smoke rises from the centre and spirals around the room. I take my seat just in time for the sound of the gong, signifying the start of a meditation.
The room falls quiet for thirty minutes, aside from the sound of gentle breathing and the odd muffled snore. This time last year I would have been completely out of my comfort zone in a situation like this, but after struggling my way through the meditation retreat and omming with Ivan the acrobat, I am now quite accustomed to (although still not good at) the practice of meditation.
My mind drifts to yesterday evening when we were instructed to ‘attune’ to our service departments to perform our daily ‘love in action’ (otherwise known as work). Posters had been pinned to three corners of the room, reading ‘Homecare’, ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Gardening’.
‘It’s important that you tune in and listen to your intuition to tell you where you should be, rather than just walking to where you feel you want to be,’ Paul had said.
The meditation gong drags me from my memory, and I leave the Sanctuary in a dream-like state to walk to the homecare ‘nest’, a cosy, Enid Blyton-esque room with two sofas and a number of misshapen wooden chairs. The walls are covered in posters, paintings and pinned messages describing the difference between fairies, gnomes and sprites.
‘Hello there.’ A gentle voice warms me as I take a seat. The voice belongs to Rory, the focaliser of the homecare department, who wears a baseball cap over his long white hair. American and a self-professed hippie, Rory arrived here in the seventies after a stint in Esalen, a famous commune in California. I try and fail to picture him in a suit, walking out of Bank station at 7 a.m. clutching a Starbucks and a copy of the FT.
Rory leads us in a fifteen-minute ‘sharing’ session, during which people say mundane things like ‘I am feeling good today’ and ‘I had a nice breakfast’ before tuning in, deciding on our jobs for the day and sending the light from our candle to Syria. Just two days in and that sentence doesn’t even seem odd to me now.
I am to spend the morning cleaning and restocking the guest apartments. ‘Take your time!’ Rory shouts after me. ‘Don’t kill the job.’
After a day spent cleaning places that were already clean and stopping every hour for a cup of tea, the day finishes back in our group, where we meet for ‘games’.
Now familiar with making tits of ourselves, our group embrace the ridiculous games with gay abandon. ‘I am going to walk around and whisper an animal in your ear,’ says Sarah, our young games instructor, who was born and raised at Findhorn, ‘then I want you to drop to all fours, close your eyes and crawl around the room making the noise of that animal.’ We all laugh at the idea, practising generic animal noises under our breath.
‘The aim of the game is to find someone else making the same noise as you. Then when you have found everyone in your family, and you are all in one big group, you can open your eyes.’
Sarah walks around the room. ‘Dog,’ she whispers in my ear. I am elated. I am great at dog impressions.
We spend the next fifteen minutes meowing, barking, mooing and oinking our way around the room before we find ourselves in four groups.
The point of this exercise was very unclear, but it was a lot of fun and I am embracing this holiday from my ego, a challenge to my British reserve, where I can do silly things and just enjoy them for the sake of it. It is a new concept to me, as is this bond I have built so quickly with a group of strangers who wear their emotions on their sleeve, encouraging you to do the same and making you feel safe. There is a closeness in vulnerability, and I don’t know why it has taken me so long to learn this lesson.
During my lunch break on day three, I interview Yvonne, who runs a programme to encourage better links with the corporate world and spread the Findhorn philosophy. Yvonne is a professional, no-nonsense character, wearing a smart office-like dress over a petite frame, finishing her look with bright pink lipstick.
‘I never in a million years thought I would end up in a place like this,’ she begins. ‘I came in through the “life in crisis” door. I had been living a luxurious expat life in a seven-bedroom house with my ex-husband; financially rich, but emotionally poor. I was an English literature teacher and very closed down to anything that smelled of religion. I came here to find an answer to a particular question, and my voice just told me to stay here. So, after many tears, that’s what I did.’
She continues, ‘I helped to create the Building Bridges team because I found Findhorn too inward-looking and not spreading the word enough about what they do. I wanted to get out there, be relevant and make an impact, not just live in a little bubble. I thought every CEO and politician out there should do an experience week, so we should go out and meet people where they are, not just wait for them to come to us.’
‘Do you ever find it frustrating here?’ I ask her, revealing my impatience with the constant tea breaks and achingly slow pace of life.
‘Sometimes,’ she says, looking strained. ‘My job can be especially frustrating because money is a highly contentious issue here. We claim there is no separation and that everybody is all part of the same thing, but with the corporate world there can be a real “them and us” mindset.’
She takes a sip of herbal tea and waves at a young girl balancing on a rock in the communal garden. ‘Our aims are bringing love into the world and shifting consciousness, and many think that is at complete odds with making money, but I disagree with this. I think we could do wonderful things if we had more money.’ Her eyes brighten. ‘We are all interested in non-monetary abundance – life here is very, very rich – but we do need money because we still have to make our budget sheet balance every year.’
The sun rises on day four at Findhorn, and I make my way to the homecare nest for our tuning in. After a second cup of tea and a round of sharing about how good a night’s sleep we all got, Rory sends me to restock an apartment half a mile down the road. I arrive fifteen minutes later, discover the job has already been done, turn around and walk back in a huff.
‘Oh, I must have already done it,’ Rory says when I return, without a hint of apology. ‘But you were obviously supposed to take that walk.’ He smiles and winks, looking pleased that he has apparently solved the mystery of his mistake.
‘Why don’t you come and help me in the laundry?’ he suggests. ‘Folding sheets is an art form, you know.’ Unconvinced, I follow him into a big warm room, draped with sheets and smelling strongly of lemons. He teaches me his method of folding the sheets and ironing them with his hands until they are perfect squares. With each new sheet, a look of sheer joy lights up his face, as if this is the best thing he could possibly be doing. ‘It’s absolutely delightful.’ He looks up at me, life bursting from his eyes.
His level of contentment for doing such menial work sparks a pang of envy. Why can’t I find joy in such simple tasks? I rush through all of my jobs, always thinking about what’s next rather than absorbing myself into what I am doing and enjoying the moment. Perhaps because I would lose at least three decades from my life if I took this long over such simple tasks, and that’s a lot of social-media scrolling and Netflix binging I would be missing out on.
As we walk back to the homecare nest to tune out before lunch, Rory tells me that he was rejected for a job in Tesco a few years ago. I wonder what they would have made of him taking three hours to stack a shelf (and finding the process delightful). As I reach out to open the door, my thoughts are interrupted by a thwack in the face.
‘We will have to ask the gardener to trim it for us,’ Rory says of my rogue branch assailant.
‘I could do it?’ I offer.
‘No, the gardener might have a special relationship with that particular bush, and you can’t interrupt that.’ He flashes me one of his vacant smiles, opening into a laugh when he sees my bemused expression.
I recall being told by our guide on the first day that Findhorn gardeners will discuss any pruning or felling with the tree beforehand, giving warning, explaining why the action needs to happen and seeking reconciliation. Even the household appliances here are given human names and treated as individuals.
Rory is still laughing. ‘And I can tell you exactly what he will say’ – he points at the homecare nest in front of us – ‘he’ll say, “It’s your hut that’s in the way, not the bush!”’
The next two days whizz by in a sea of hand-holding, meditation, cups of herbal tea and a ‘nature bathing’ session where we literally spend three hours hugging trees in the rain. Then, before I know it, I am sitting back in the Beech Tree Room with my group for our final tuning-out session. We are each asked to share something with the group: a song, a poem, a dance, a lesson in how to make origami hearts.
When I am finally passed the ‘sharing stone’, I find myself close to tears again. I had come here for what I thought would be a relatively transactional experience but am leaving with much more. I have learned how important community is, enjoyed the warm, fuzzy feeling of being part of this group, and realised the deep connection you can build with other humans if you are brave enough to be vulnerable with them.
The people of Findhorn are full of compassion, gentle and thoughtful. They are never too proud to dance around like a child or cry at the beauty of a sunset. They allow themselves to feel and do not fear judgement.
I have enjoyed getting to know each and every one of my fellow experience-weekers and we have spent so much time together I feel a remarkably strong bond has developed between us all. Often when I refer to people as ‘nice’, this is shorthand for ‘as dull as an episode of Cornwall with Caroline Quentin’ (sorry if you love this show; I use it to send myself to sleep), but this group are some of the most interesting people I have ever met; full of intrigue, warmth and passion, and open to anything, even crawling around with their eyes shut while honking like a goose.
I know, I know. One week in the commune and I’m all hand-holding and tree-hugging. Well, not quite – there were a few things I struggled with. Like asking forgiveness from the hedge in need of pruning, asking Helen the Hoover if she minded helping me with the task of cleaning the meditation room, or the countless stories of community members having lengthy conversations about the meaning of life with birds, moles and various other woodland creatures.
The community is operationally dysfunctional, I have no idea how it works, and any management consultant would have an absolute field day here. I know that if I lived here, this is what I would struggle with the most. I would buckle at the inefficiency of it all. I would want to make things work better, stop the pointless cleaning and re-cleaning of everything, and the endless talking just for the sake of it. But despite its inefficiencies, it all just, sort of, works.
‘What does the future look like for you?’ I had asked Yvonne as I was packing up after our interview on day three.
‘I don’t know.’ She looked disoriented. ‘But I don’t want to be a part of the slick world out there. It has no heart. I could have lived a very selfish life, just looking after myself, but I like helping to facilitate the evolution of human consciousness. I am too nourished by being here to leave.’
I too felt nourished at Findhorn, a community where I believed anything, trusted everybody; a holiday from my pride, my cynicism, my black-and-white view of the world. I genuinely feel that I was supposed to come to this place and that a small miracle did happen. Even if that miracle was as simple as a newfound love for folding sheets.