This article was previously published in Network News Issue 31, Summer 2002.

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The organising group for our 40th Birthday celebrations has been hosting regular Foundations of Findhorn evenings where folk who were here in the sixties and seventies talk about the founding principles. Founder Dorothy Maclean graciously offered to write an article so our external family can also be reacquainted with our founding principles. This article includes previously unreleased divine guidance received by Dorothy.

I’m delighted to hear that as part of the preparations for the 40th birthday, time is being spent looking back on the founding principles of Findhorn. As you know, to me there are two main principles: (1) Connect with our inner divinity, which anyone can do, and (2) from there connect with the intelligence of nature, ask its help and cooperate with it.

Peter, Eileen, and I met each other through Sheena, who was encouraging each of us to depend on the God within. We had each, in our different ways, made that inner contact. I first experienced this inner contact during a period of my life when my ability and capacity to choose to be loving was being tested. I believe that my commitment to choosing being loving was what brought about my experience of knowing God within. That experience changed me completely, and soon after, through following the inner suggestion to, “Stop, listen and write,” I made conscious contact with that inner God.

In my first uncensored connection, mention was made of the quicksilver changes in the thought life proceeding from God. Three days later (April 22, 1954, pm), I became aware of God, an exquisitely delightful fun-filled mind, with references being made to the bursting joy which is our birthright as human beings. At this early stage, because of my cultural upbringing, I saw God as a father/mother figure within. But my direct experience was so different from the biblical God of my youth that my view of divinity was completely changed. For years afterwards I tuned in three times a day and over time my ideas of the sacred were broadened and I was helped to accept the changes this broadening catalysed. For instance, I received:
“Leading a life of bliss entails cancelling other engagements, engagements you have made through habit to your body, to convention, to social codes, to others’ opinions. Throw them away merrily and fill your engagement book with my engagements, which may not be conventional but are much more fulfilling. Each day is a blank page, each hour has a different fragrance.”

I would emerge from these times of meditation feeling wonderful, beautiful, delightful, and would hope the feeling would last more than a few seconds! All the messages strengthened me, expanded my mind and brought me closer to the sacred. When I received the following on June 12, 1954:

“Come closer come closer so softly on tiptoe. As quietly as a mouse creep up on me. Let me draw you nearer in slow motion lest we disturb anyone lest we raise any dust.

Move closer to me invisibly, hearing no evil, seeing no evil, speaking no evil. Only purity can come close to me, and we do not want any ripple of impurity to trip you.

Draw nearer, draw nearer, with the movement of your heart. Let it expand into me, let it bridge any space that might be between us, until there is just one big, glowing heart, so big, that it holds up this universe.

Let the wings of your heart bear you closer. Let them gently flutter a little nearer, bringing you closer to me without our awareness. Sneak into my heart, into my comfort, into the protection of my wings. Nestle there. Pull in all your toes, be part of my heart, blood of my blood, my child.

This is your home. From there you can fly with my messages, but this is your home. Feel at home in it until any other dwelling place makes you homesick, until any defence but the defencelessness of love and truth are contrary to you, until your whole life is that of love and you take your home, my heart, with you to bring others home.”

I could not help but be in love with God, who is both personal and impersonal. The rare beauty of the contact widened and deepened, helped by later messages, such as:
“Stretch every particle of yourself towards me, and I will fill every particle with myself out of my abundance. Soak yourself in the stream of love inside and out, giving yourself up completely. Relax in it, drown in it, every atom of you, until there is nothing in you not made new and pure. Then breathe again, like a newly emerged chick, breathing love instead of air. It is my love that keeps you alive, that sustains you. Know this, breathe it in softly, breathe it out gently. Let all your thoughts come to love for their life—that they breathe forth my dimensions of love. Let all your acts come to love for their life, that they abound only with love. Let all you see be seen in love, that you see only boundless loveliness. Walk tentatively in this world of love, letting me guide each step. Stay very young – this is the land of eternal youth and you will lose your way if you grow up! Let every particle of yourself remain in love, and you will never lose your way again. Go onward in the stream of love.”

The best part of the day was meditation time, for then I was most truly myself. Always God lifted me up, guided me on how to deal with my hang-ups and limitations, encouraged me to know that with divine help black can be turned to white and the impossible made possible. Day by day for weeks, months and years God raised my consciousness and did so with incredibly infinite patience. Through the years my love for and trust in God deepened, for I could always find help from that source.

As a trio, we found we could trust what the other two received from this source. Always we were asked to bring that love into daily events, however busy we might be. Eileen and I would read our guidance out to the community every morning in the sanctuary. Our lives depended on our inner contact and on our willingness to follow those inner directions. Indeed that is what built the community.

I turn now to the subject of the Landscape Angel and the Angel of Findhorn. Immediately after I made my first angelic/devic contact, I became aware of a presence in charge of everything in our area, of all minerals, plants, animals and humans. At the time I called this presence the Landscape Angel. In hindsight I think I may have misnamed it and in so doing limited it to the land. I have come more recently to understand that it is part of a planetary angel. It seems more accurate to perceive it as the local representative of the Gaia Angel. It offered advice on a huge range of subjects, but most of its advice reflected our main concern – the garden. Throughout that period of exploration of the devic/angelic contacts I continued to turn daily to the God within. The Landscape Angel itself offered the most wonderful views of humans, telling us that we are God in the making here, and it nourished me/us and helped us to be more fully human. I have hundreds of messages from it. A favourite one is that of May 17, 1971:
“We call to you humans, from the highest of our realms, and you are there. We call… stay put to your immensity. For this we have wielded power through the ages, but now we can know one another and come together for the glory of God. We need call you no longer; as one we can express wholeness.”

The Angel of Findhorn is a people-oriented angel. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that we consciously took part in its growth. Its job is to help people everywhere turn within for their sacredness. My first hint of its existence came in the form of a “sleeping beauty” sort of presence. Four years passed after that first impression before I had direct contact with it. In all, I had only five messages from the Angel of Findhorn in the eleven years I was at Findhorn. And Findhorn’s message, that of the possibilities of inner contact, has spread to people all over the world.

Landscape Angel Drawing by Brian Nobbs

Landscape Angel Drawing by Brian Nobbs

Years ago, when I returned to Findhorn after years of absence, I was surprised to find how much the Angel of Findhorn seemed to have supplanted the Landscape Angel. Most Findhornians seemed to address their problems to, and ask for help from, the Findhorn Angel. My understanding is that the angels have no rivalry and work in tandem, so the Landscape Angel has no investment in being called upon or utilised consciously. Like all beings of that realm it goes about its work whatever the level of conscious collaboration may be. However, I do believe that because the community has concentrated so much on the Angel of Findhorn, its link with the land and nature has been weakened. This may be why so many people seem to feel that Findhorn is not “grounded”.

On my travels round the world I have met many who have visited Findhorn and are disappointed that the link with the intelligence of nature is not followed up more. While lots of good work is done with the environment and with environmental issues, it seems that the work on conscious cooperation with these realms has become somewhat peripheral in terms of practical application or focus on a daily basis. As the community evolves and matures no doubt many things will change, but the foundations remain for those who seek them.

With love
Dorothy Maclean

“MAY 10 1954, PM
Relax into my love, into my peace which is all around you and within you. Let me whisper to you of castles of beauty, of an architecture as lovely and as refreshing as the trees, with rooms inside like glades of spring flowers, with carpets as living as moss underfoot. In the cool of the evenings there is a resting and the twilight falls like the dew of the morning. The sounds are soft like lullabies, the music of my stillness. The air breathed is love, and all your companions could only be loved ones.”

 

 

“May 12 1954, PM
Think of me as a travel guide. I will lead you into places not marked on the map, places that are the oldest yet the newest on Earth. You will have to make your own picture postcards, and there will be few you can send them to, few who will believe you for they have not heard of these lands.
There are no dungeons to visit but there are lots of stairs to climb. I don’t tell you how many so you don’t notice them until you get far enough to have a view – a view that is ever more breathtaking, ever more fair, ever more satisfying. Sometimes we ring bells on the way, bells of fine workmanship and the peals call out to those below. And instead of your feet getting heavier the higher you climb, they get lighter; you get second and third breaths, until you practically float up. The laws of gravity are reversed and a more ancient law comes into force. You can thumb your nose at the rules of the old fogies, for these new principles confound them.
You will not have to descend again and go home feeling tired. You will find home here.”