A reimagined ‘Experience Week: From I to We’ has been launched to meet the needs of seekers in today’s fast-paced and high-pressure world. Originally introduced in the 1970s, the programme has been a doorway to change and transformation for thousands of visitors to the celebrated Ecovillage and spiritual Community in the northeast of Scotland.
Many enrolled to pause their lives, have a purpose-driven holiday, or take a deeper dive into themselves in a safe and nurturing environment. For some it was life changing.
More than two years ago a perfect storm of events saw Experience Week put on hold as the organising Findhorn Foundation charity navigated the impacts of Covid, Brexit, an overdue need for radical downsizing and restructuring, and twin arson attacks that destroyed both the Community Centre and main meditation Sanctuary. In effect a blow to the social and spiritual heart of the Community.
So fast forward to May 2026, we have a revitalised Community and a new, leaner version of the enduring core programme, based within the Park Ecovillage Findhorn. In the past most programmes were hosted five miles away at the former Cluny Hill hotel, which has since been sold.
Having served for seven years within the now-disbanded Findhorn Foundation Guest Department, where I hosted and co-facilitated scores of programmes and retreats, I signed up for the first of the new-look Experience Weeks to see what had changed and evolved since my last involvement in 2023.
I’m delighted to report that the most memorable and inspiring ingredients have been retained. And I was especially pleased to be hosted by friends Christine Lines and Jörn Fiebig, both highly experienced and accomplished group leaders. Christine has crafted the latest tweaks.
Pivotal to the programme are three spiritual practices that underpin Ecovillage Findhorn Community life:
- taking time to be still and go within to access inner wisdom,
- co-creating with the intelligence of nature,
- seeing work as love in action.
The practices are made real by the lived experience of meditations in the magnificent new Light of Findhorn Sanctuary, outings in nature, and ‘Love in Action’ work sessions in the gardens, including the Original Garden. Here magic has happened, a veritable garden of Eden emerging where once there were bleak sand dunes devoid of mature trees and birdlife, and evidence everywhere of decaying military infrastructure from WW2.
Today the emphasis is on living in ways that are kinder to each other and all lifeforms. The invitation also being to remember to be kind to oneself.
Not too long ago it wasn’t unusual to have more than one Experience Week running simultaneously, some catering for Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and other language groups, with up to 24 participants in each group. Accommodation was shared, sometimes with four and five people to a room.
The restart is slow and deliberate, my group consisting of Christine and Jörn staying in their own homes, while nine participants were comfortably accommodated in the Guest Lodge adjoining the Village Green. Simple wholesome vegetarian meals were prepared and delivered by Community members.
It was here in the 1970s that the original Angel Cards were developed, and a ritual for each of us was to choose – or be chosen by – an angel card, that represented a quality we could focus on, and hopefully be guided and supported by, during the week.
Angel Meditation
Mine was Authenticity. It encouraged me to ‘Add your unique ingredients to the mix. Express yourself. Uncloak your originality and manifest your pure potential.’
What does this mean? I decided that to be authentic I need to peel away the layers (the work of a lifetime) to reveal the unconditionally loving spiritual being that I am. I believe we are all eternal spiritual beings having an Earthly physical experience.
A good beginning point is to go within. To go into the silence, whether that is in meditation, or during a silent, solo walk in nature. In that space it is easier to remember: my essence is love. I am loved. I am loveable.
On her 96th birthday I asked Dorothy Maclean, one of the Findhorn Foundation Community founders, if she had any further ambitions in life. Her pioneering work as a loving bridge between the human and nature kingdoms had already touched thousands, perhaps millions of people.
“Yes,” she said, “to be more loving.” So simple. To be more loving. And I believe that love needs not only to radiate outwards, but also inwards. We need to love ourselves.
The loving energy has long been a magnet for world servers and spiritual luminaries, and I recall Neale Donald Walsch, author of the Conversation with God books, saying, “There is a unique energy here … it makes it easy for people to access a different way of knowing, understanding and experiencing of some of the higher truths of life and how it is.”
“Come to the edge,” Walsch invites. “What Findhorn brings to the human spirit is the possibility of flying!”
Feedback from the first Experience Week has been positive, with one of my fellow participants observing, “A chance to reconnect, with ourselves, each other, and the natural world.”
Another comment was, “I got what I came for after two hours, from feeling guarded to being open.”
In the Ecovillage I’ve met spiritual teachers Robert and Hollie Holden on several occasions, and been captivated by Robert’s recent book Higher Purpose, How to Find More Inspiration, Meaning and Purpose in Your Life. He writes, “If by the end of this book, you are still not sure how to find your higher purpose, I’ll make it very simple for you. Your purpose is to love the world. You are here to be a presence of love. Your work is to be the most loving person you can be.”
That resonates with the insight from my latest Experience Week, that my sacred quest is to be more loving.
Thank you Findhorn and Experience Week for the prompt.
An author, writer, and spiritual and ecological activist
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