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Editor’s Notes: The following was published in Faces of Findhorn, in Section II entitled Experience, page 26 – 33.

Peter and Eileen

PeterCaddy

Peter: People often ask me how to go about starting a community such as Findhorn. One way you don’t do it is by advertising for others to come and join you. That’s putting the cart before the horse, and it’s not the way to attract people anyway.

The people are important and what they are is more important than what they know, but first you must have a vision. You need to have a vision of why you want to start a community and then sound that note and those who resonate to that note will be drawn to you.

Also in my experience, you must be sure you’re going to start a center in the right place: it needs to be in a place of spiritual power to which you feel really drawn. lt is as if there are nodules or acupuncture points or chakras in the Earth and it is at these places that centers of Light should be started. Different centers will start in various places for different purposes. Just as there are different acupuncture points or chakras in the body and each one has a particular function, so it is with centers.

However, the real question is not, “Am I starting a community on the right land or the right power point?” but rather, “Is it really God’s will for me to start a community?” If I can be sure of that, then all these things will come.

If you are guided from within to form a center, then it’s worth remembering that it’s the foundation that takes the time in constructing a building, because it has to be solid. The groundwork has to be dug deep. It has to be strongly based on the God within, so that the whole structure can withstand the storms and stresses that undoubtedly will come later.

A community needs to be clear about its own identity with its vision. If people come and they don’t identify with that vision, then it should be made clear that it’s the wrong place for them.

They should go to another group that is more in harmony with their vision of a new age center. So it is important that you keep a clear vision of what the role, function and purpose are for each particular center.

To start a community I believe you need strong leadership – with the vision to get it under way, and with the ability to make decisions. Then later on you can evolve into group consciousness. I know of no successful community that started as a group. Findhorn itself was started with strong leadership, and now it has moved more into group consciousness, group work.

It’s also essential to stress that a strong initial vision isn’t the same as a blueprint. Supposing we had been told right at the beginning what Findhorn was going to develop into? We wouldn’t have believed it. So we were just given a little bit at a time, and that led us to the importance of living in the moment, in the “now”, concentrating on one step at a time and finishing off to perfection one job at a time. You can only do that if you are willing to be led intuitively from one stage of growth to the next.

Another vital lesson in starting to work with any building or area is to clean it from top to bottom. That clears out all the darkness and puts in vibrations of love and light. There is an occult reason for this, in that the forces of darkness can always find a niche where there is dirt and disorder.

We also learned how essential it is to start a new venture in a consciousness of love and peace. If any of us were in disharmony or upset or feeling negative, we would stop working and find that inner center so that the right vibrations could be put into what we were doing. Those vibrations are what set up a magnetic force field which draws people to you.

It’s much easier to start a spiritual venture now. Eileen and Dorothy and I underwent long and rigorous spiritual training before we even came to Findhorn. I think people no longer need such drastic or rigorous training, though training itself is important; training in self-discipline, faith, obedience to inner prompting and being able to hear that still small voice within, being able to act on intuition.

I will give just one example of the sort of training I had in order to learn obedience to the inner prompting. The earliest spiritual training of Eileen and myself was given by my former wife, Sheena. She was a great soul but ruthless in her training methods. At one time, Eileen, Sheena and I were having coffee after dinner in a London restaurant. Half way through my cup of coffee, I had an inner prompting to go and see a friend named Jack. I finished my coffee, and left, saying I had a prompting to go and see Jack.

I missed him, though. I could not understand it. I came back and said, “I don’t know why, but I have just missed him. I had the prompting when I was half way through my coffee.” Sheena turned on me, told me that she knew psychically that this man had a revolver with him and had gone to commit suicide. She said that I’d missed him because, instead of following my inner prompting, I had followed my lower nature and finished my coffee. ln fact, he had not taken his life, but for my training Sheena felt I had to believe that he had.

Once you have learned a lesson like that, you do not forget it very easily. Some years later when again the three of us were in a cafe in northern Scotland, and I was half way through my cup of tea, I had a prompting to go and see someone on the South Coast of England, about 650 miles away. I was out like a shot without stopping to explain. With only a shilling in my pocket, I was out on the road, and coming towards me was a Rover car which I stopped. As it turned out, the driver was going all the way to London. She was a spiritual person and we had a marvellous talk; she also had a lovely hamper full of chicken which I ate with great relish.

If I had finished my cup of tea, I would have missed that lift and would probably have had to wait for ages for another.

I got to the South Coast, completed what I went for, and then headed back for Scotland. I got a lift in a truck out of London.

Sitting in the front of the truck at a traffic light, I looked down on a sports car which had a vacant seat. I said goodbye to the truck driver and got a lift in the sports car all the way to Carlisle, at eighty or ninety miles per hour.

If I had delayed and had not followed that inner prompting, the light would have changed to green, the car would have been away and I would have missed it.

I got to Carlisle and wondered how I would get to Oban. There was a fish lorry coming down the main street. I stopped it and got a lift to Oban. The driver seemed very sleepy. He had been driving for sixteen hours, so I asked if he would let me drive. I drove all the way through the night, and when we arrived at Oban next morning at 7:30, he was so delighted that he bought me breakfast.

The whole journey had been accomplished in less than four days. I could not have done it as quickly in my own car, and in spite of starting off with only a shilling, everything had been provided through having the discipline to act upon my intuition.

ln 1972, when the community was well­ established, David Spangler told me that I had developed the qualities of leadership in order to establish Findhorn, and now the leadership needed to be balanced with more love and understanding. Findhorn did not belong to Eileen and myself only, it belonged to its members, and once we had taken them, shall we say, through rebellious adolescence to maturity, the time had come to hand over responsibility. My next step was to awaken within me that side which could draw out and inspire people rather than appear to them as an authority figure. That was a big challenge for me – it was difficult to relate to people in that way while being aware of the things that needed to be done. It has taken many years, and the process has not been an easy one.

Once I had handed on the torch of leadership, I found that the flow of energy and inspiration was no longer moving through me in the same way. This really sank in one day as a party of us were driving to Erraid, with François at the wheel. Normally I drive pretty fast, but sitting next to him as we wound along the shores of Loch Ness, I thought we were travelling at an alarming speed, taking quite unnecessary risks. Each time we went around a blind comer I was terrified, thinking, “Good Heavens, I wouldn’t have done that,” until it dawned on me that only when you are in the driver’ s seat do you know with confidence what to do, what risks you can take. And François was now in the driver’s seat, not I.

Interlinked with the changes of leadership and government within the community have been profound changes within Eileen and myself and within our relationship. Eileen and I were brought together like two soul halves to raise a family and help establish this community. We complemented each other as male and female, light and love, mind and heart, action and being. Together we made a whole. Our relationship was much more simple then, and became very challenging once Eileen was called upon to develop the so-called masculine attributes of independence, will and purposeful action and I began developing the more so-called feminine aspects of love, feeling and sensitivity. lt was not easy for either of us. We reached a point where we felt it would be better for us to separate for a time, in order to continue our individual growth and find that balance as individuals.

I suppose, like many men, I find it difficult to understand women. With my long training in positive thinking I have been taught to control my emotions and deliberately choose what to experience. lt is very difficult for a man like me to understand a woman’s emotions, and I need to develop this understanding. I do not find that easy because I have never really experienced pain and suffering for myself.

The other aspect of developing the feminine part of myself has been to learn to rely on my own inner knowing. For me, this was speeded up once Eileen was told to stop getting guidance for the community or myself. Until then, God made sure that there was always someone there like Eileen, Dorothy, David and others to check with so that I could be absolutely sure my intuition was right.

Since then, my own inner knowing has been developing. I don’t hear voices; I don’t see visions; I can meditate until I’m blue in the face and never get anything- and then at the most unexpected times, like when I’m in the bath, or early in the morning, guidance comes in the form of intuition. It’s no good trying to stop me once that inner knowledge happens! A vital aspect of the New Age is that each one of us learns to turn to the Divinity within. With that come the lessons of obedience and action. There’s not much good in having an inner prompting if you don’t act upon it.

I think that we are living in the most exciting period of history, a time of great change and transformation. How quickly this transformation comes about depends on how all of us experience it in our lives; how much love and light we can embody; how well we form together in groups and families to live in love and harmony. Centers of Light are emerging throughout the world as catalysts and points of stability, and the network of Light is growing stronger as people move between these centers. Times of political, social and economic turmoil are ahead, and I see that in coming years the world will need centers of stability, of love and light, balance and synthesis. It is important that these centers be linked up and that we each find that synthesis within ourselves.

Eileen Caddy

Eileen: In October, 1971, I was told in meditation that I was to stop receiving guidance for the community, that each had to go within to find his or her own inner direction. I shared this guidance, and I stopped there and then. After that I was told to stop receiving guidance for Peter as well. That was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do, because it threatened my whole identity; I didn’t know what else my role could be.

I felt completely lost, and it was hard for Peter and the community, too. It was like taking a baby off the breast suddenly, without weaning it. Of course, people still came to me. And I tried to help them, but never with guidance. I would get my own inner direction about what to say, but I would never give guidance to anyone.

It took me a number of years to realize that it wasn’t necessary for me always to have guidance, to be the oracle; that I had to go within to live and demonstrate what I had received through thirty thousand pages of guidance. Now I’m just living it. It’s like my lifeblood, and I feel it flowing through me.

From time to time over the past few years, Peter has sought guidance or confirmation from others. I used to find this hard at times. I would ask in meditation if I could get guidance for Peter, and I would be told that if I did, I would be holding up Peter’s growth and evolution. I felt that because of my not receiving guidance for him, Peter and I were drawing further and further apart, and yet I felt that if that was what God wanted me to do, it must be right and best for both of us.

Eventually, I think Peter and I had to separate, for the present anyway, so that we could become two individuals first and foremost instead of two halves of a whole. It has been a question for both of us of trying to find a balance within ourselves. I have felt something of the power of that inner synthesis and of bringing the diverse elements together within me. Gradually, I feel I’m becoming a whole person, a whole being.

It has been the most devastating and yet the most wonderfully transforming time I have ever lived through. When Peter suggested we should separate, we were in Edinburgh at our son Christopher’s graduation, and I was very angry. My pride was really hurt. I felt that I was a complete failure as a wife and as a woman. My guidance dried up. I was no longer needed by my children since they were all grown up. Now Peter no longer needed me. The community did not need me as they were working things out themselves and didn’t need a “parent” image to help them. I was full of self-pity. I didn’t want to go back to the community. I felt like a sick animal, and I wanted to find a hole to hide myself in.

Then I started receiving very clear guidance again. God kept telling me the last things I wanted to hear: I was not to divorce Peter. I was to wait, to be patient. I was told to go back to the community. I was to release Peter completely. God made things very clear to me; and I found that those times of stillness, listening to God, were my lifelines, although I didn’t always like what I heard.

A therapist who is a dear friend of mine came to Findhorn to spend some time with me and help me shortly after I came back. She did a healing meditation with me. She took me up a spiral pathway to the top of a mountain, to a temple. I laid Peter and all my anger, frustration, jealousy, pain and hurt pride on the altar in the temple and gave it all over to God. She then said I was to visualize an angel standing there, and the angel was handing me a pair of golden scissors. Of my own choosing, using my own free will, I was to cut the psychic umbilical cord that had linked Peter and me through the years. I cut the cord and tied a knot in it and placed it in my solar plexus.

During the meditation I found myself standing before a silver disc. I went inside the disc and stood in the middle of it. It was completely empty, but the inside of the disc was all silver as well. As I stood there, I heard the words, “Now accept the Freedom of the Spirit, the Joy of the Spirit.” The silver from the disc poured into every atom and cell of my being until there was nothing left of me but pure silver.

Two days later I realized I was no longer attached to Peter. I was free, and, what was more wonderful, I could send love and blessings to him. It was a glorious feeling, and I kept thanking God for it. All my anger, jealousy, pain and hurt pride had gone. I could love as I had never loved before; love with God’s divine love, unconditional love.

When we have found the balance of the masculine and the feminine within us, I know that we will not need to demand anything of each other at all. My aim is to find that complete balance within myself, with the knowledge that Peter and I will come together again if it is God’s will. About a week later, God said to me: “Now I want you to lay the community on the altar and give it to me.” I was told that this was my biggest child, that I had been able to give up all my children, and Peter, and now it was time I gave up the community. I cried and cried; then I laid the community on the altar and gave it to God; and as I did, I realized that now I had given everything to God and I had nothing to hold on to. My security was in God alone.

I have put God first in everything in my life now, and my heart is overflowing with love, praise and gratitude. And I thank God for these tremendous gifts of freedom and for everything that has happened.

Joannie and Eileen

As far as the community is concerned, it is God’s community. The spiritual roots have gone deep, deep down – nothing is going to shake them. I was told in meditation the other day, “The leaves may change with the seasons, the branches may be broken off with the winds of change and the storms of confusion, but the trunk is absolutely solid and steady, and the roots are very firmly established so that nothing can uproot them. They are there for all time.” That is because this community is rooted and grounded in God; otherwise it would have crumbled a long time ago.

Although Findhorn has attracted a lot of attention in the last few years, and Peter and I have been invited to give lectures and workshops all over the world, there is nothing glamorous about our work. In some ways, it’s very easy to be in the public eye. My own personal experience is that whenever life has become too glamorous for me, it’s as if God takes me by the ear and puts me into a very ordinary, mundane position. And that’s when you get down to the nitty-gritty. How do you cope? Can you love what you’re doing? Can you really love washing those nappies? Washing the dishes? Cleaning the floor when the children come in with their muddy boots? These mundane things take all glamor away and you realize that you are learning to do everything with love, and therefore you are doing everything for the glory of God. Learn to love what you are doing, no matter how ordinary or how mundane it is. Do it. That’s what Findhorn is all about. It’s as simple as that.

Peter

Peter Caddy

Peter Caddy, Community co-founder.