CONFERENCES@FINDHORN

 

Connecting Findhorn
with the World

When I arrived at Findhorn in 1974, the place and the energy that it exuded and evoked blew me away. Like virtually everyone else, I experienced a prolonged honeymoon period, primarily informed by my sense of what it had to offer the world. Though its preferred image was that of a western mystery school, it seemed to me that its principles and experiences could be distilled into themes that could attract, inspire and motivate.

I always related to David Spangler’s description of the community as a place of vision and transformation, and when I joined the education department I set about developing conferences that would unpack that aspect.

I came here from the San Francisco Bay area of California where I had immersed myself in the new consciousness movement. I was especially attracted by the Esalen Institute’s exploration of human potential and its higher reaches, ie transpersonal psychology.

I first encountered Findhorn during a large event in San Francisco in 1974. The Lorian group (including David Spangler, Milenko Matanovic and Dorothy Maclean) did a presentation that seemed to capture the spirit of what everyone else was on about. It evoked a genuine and deeply moving religious experience in me, changed my life and drew me here some months later.

Once I had settled in a bit and my sublime time in the Maintenance Department had passed, they let me get a bit closer to the ‘engine’ of the place – the programmes comprising Findhorn’s principal service to the world and helping pay its bills. I became part of the group that produced our first reasonably big conference on Groups And Transpersonal Growth in 1976. About 80 folks from the community, Europe and the USA gathered for a week in Cluny to share our perspectives on group work and its capacity to evoke higher consciousness and spiritual growth. Although fraught with interpersonal dynamics of virtually every description, it culminated in a major initiation for us all on the power point behind Cluny. We were fused, transformed, into a true, unforgettable brother/ sisterhood of seekers.

This impulse carried on into the first big conference in the Universal Hall the following October, on The World Crisis And The Wholeness Of Life. Tom Welch and I wanted to consider Findhorn’s relevance to world events and we invited EF Schumacher, William Irwin Thompson, Lady Eve Balfour (then president of the Soil Association), and David Spangler to do the musing for us in front of 250 enthralled people.

Over five years the Foundation ran One Earth conferences on virtually every aspect of the community – major networking events where participants connected with other folks doing similar work or inspired them to get started.

I re-engaged with conferences in 1982 when Foundation Focaliser François Duquesne asked me to set the scene for buying the caravan park with Building A Planetary Village. Happily, it worked. The universe supported us magnificently with enough donations from our supporters to purchase The Park and begin its transformation into an ecological village.

I did another five conferences, connecting us to the citizen diplomacy movement, to the western esoteric tradition, to the quest for community and sustainability, and to Alan Featherstone’s abiding Trees For Life dream of Restoring the Earth.

Conferences are now a staple. We must have produced at least 75 over the past 35 years. All have served to establish the community not just as a superb venue but as a place whose ongoing life and work inspires those who come here. It seems that Findhorn truly is a place of vision and transformation.

Long may it remain thus.

Roger Doudna