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My beloved friend Dorothy Maclean died in early 2021 at age 100. She was one of the three founders of the Findhorn Community in Morayshire, Scotland. Dorothy practiced and taught what she called “attunement” to the energies and entities of Nature.

Dorothy spent an initial ten year period attuning only and often to what she called the “Living Silence.” She then discovered that she could attune to any thing or being, after making conscious connection with that silent sacred Source of all things and beings.

I first met Dorothy in 1969, when I lived in Scotland for a year and worked in the remarkably productive Findhorn garden. There, in 1965, a garden planted on sandy soil with scant additives of cow manure, grass clippings, and seaweed tested out completely satisfactorily for all nutrients, including rare trace elements, though the Morayshire County Agricultural Advisor considered this impossible at that time.

While at Findhorn, I participated in making the first large batch of compost for the garden, based on a recipe of specific organic materials that Dorothy received in an attunement. During my stays at the community in 1969 and thereafter, I witnessed the amazing size and quality of vegetables that grew in the ambient field of love and cooperation which we co-created with Nature.

Geoff with Eileen and Peter Caddy, co-founders of Findhorn Community with Dorothy Maclean, 1969 photo Leslie Oelsner

Geoff with Eileen and Peter Caddy, co-founders of Findhorn Community with Dorothy Maclean, 1969 photo Leslie Oelsner

I saw that the benefits of attunement can go beyond enhancing our own personal well-being and awareness of our surroundings. My experiences (and those of many people down the ages) suggest that cultivating a more open, harmonious state of mind can infuse our environment itself with greater well- being. The implications of this for our present climate crisis are well worth exploring.

When she visited Leslie and me in Arkansas in 1980, Dorothy taught us and many of our friends attunement. She described it as a simple process of first going within to a relatively quiet, meditative space and getting in touch with a felt sense of the Living Silence. One may then simply rest into this sense of the Sacred, or may go on from there to actively hold a clear intention to commune with a particular being or aspect of the natural world. If the latter, one briefly holds then drops one’s intention back into the Silence, rather like one drops a letter in the mailbox in order for the message in it to reach its destination. Finally, one relaxes in receptivity and notes whatever response may come by way of insights, impressions, images, words, the felt sense of a particular presence, energetic sensations, or physical effects such as goose bumps!

There must be endless ways to attune—surely you have found special ways of your own—and they all depend upon one’s receptivity. Writing and reading poetry can open a route to more receptive, deeply attuned states.

Dorothy wrote luminous passages describing impressions of her attunements to a variety of trees, flowers, places, even to whole countries. One can find these writings in the collectively authored book The Findhorn Garden, and in her own books, among them To Hear the Angels Sing, Choices of Love, and Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic. Dorothy referred to her writings as “translations” into words of the subtle, nonverbal impressions she received. She called these writings her art form, and considered them to be an integral part of her practice of attunement.

I encourage you to explore and enjoy your own ways of attuning to the place where you live and the plants, animals and other living beings you resonate with most there.