This post, authored by Mary Inglis and Roger Dounda, was previously published in Findhorn Today – Papers prepared for New Synthesis Think Tank Conference October 1987 New York City.

People who join the Findhorn Foundation do so for an initial minimum period of two years. During this time they pay membership fees of £3,000, receive board and lodging, and work full-time in one or more of the Foundation work departments. ‘Full-time’ is defined as a flexible work week of around 35 hours (although in practice most members work much more than this), plus various ‘rota’ type activities which support the Community body as a whole, such as cleaning up after communal meals, leading tours, doing sessions in the guest programmes and cooking occasional weekend meals. Work is allocated by the Personnel Department in consultation with the individuals and departments concerned and initially tends to be in the support or service areas such as the kitchens, gardens, housecare (cleaning), shop, maintenance and building. Work allocation at this point often has more to do with the Community needs in these areas than with an individual’s particular skills or talents. Changes in work departments can be fairly frequent.

At the end of the two year period, members who do not leave either take on a Foundation staff position or become independent members. Those who become staff receive board and lodging, as well as a small cash allowance which is the same across the board. They make a longer-term commitment to a particular area of work, taking on more responsibility for the long-range goals and continuity of the Foundation. In recent years, members taking on staff positions have tended to gravitate towards areas where the work required corresponds more closely to their particular skills or sense of vocation.

Those who become independent members essentially strike out on their own to follow their own initiatives and create their own livelihood, while still maintaining a close relationship with the Foundation. Many of the endeavours begun by independent members are related to the Foundation’s work but are activities or businesses which the Foundation as a charitable body is not itself in a position to take on. They provide a larger income than that available from the Foundation, and tend to be enterprises in which the individuals involved see themselves as following their own sense of vocation and using and developing their specific skills.

As a ‘model’, the Foundation’s approach to work and vocation is not the result of clear forward planning and philosophical or ideological envisioning. Rather, it has emerged step by step, in response to the needs and aspirations both of the Foundation and the individuals within it. Nevertheless, there is a philosophical basis, albeit one that often evolves from hindsight and from paying attention to the consequences of particular actions/trends or policies.

During the first 10-15 years of the Community, the philosophy of work was succinctly summarized by co-founder Peter Caddy, himself a workaholic and man of action, by two maxims: “Work is love in action” and “Aim for perfection”. The criterioa of mastering any task or work situation were 1. “patience, persistence and perseverance” and 2. “learning to love where you are, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with”. In other words, work was an opportunity to work on yourself, an opportunity for self-observation, self- discipline, self-expression, for group-work and cooperation, but most of all, for bringing yourself into the moment and for putting your heart into it. Approached thus, work quite simply becomes an experience in transformation and is not simply productive but joyful.

Four additional factors contributed to this rather extraordinary work atmosphere.

  1. Every work situation began with an ‘attunement’, either several moments of silence or a guided meditation which helped group members to centre themselves and focus their attention.
  2. The group task would be briefly outlined and placed in context so that everyone has a sense of how their particular job contributes to the whole.
  3. Wherever possible, people were given the opportunity to work with others, thereby facilitating social interactions as well as job focus.
  4. Longer departmental ‘attunements’, usually at the close of the week, created an opportunity to reflect together upon the work experience in terms both of process and content, to voice and clear personal or interpersonal tensions, challenges, frustrations, to consider creative ways to
    improve the work situation, or literally anything else that might come up.

These practices helped to create a context in which people tend to put their heart and soul into work and therefore, to be fulfilled by it. It became an experience for which monetary rewards were not simply irrelevant, but for which people were happy to pay the Foundation. For the most part, this situation continues to be the case at the Foundation, which is one reason why work continues to be virtually the glue of the place for guests and members alike.

At the same time, the novelty of this experience eventually diminishes. Hence, the longer that people stayed at Findhorn, the more they eventually gravitated towards positions of greater responsibility. As they did so, job satisfaction derived increasingly from seeing how their own responsibilities related to the larger whole of the community itself, together with increasing participation in policy making. Once again, no monetary reward was involved, only that of increased involvement and authority.

Characteristically, there were two distinct stages in this cycle:

  1. Work in the service departments tends to be rather repetitive and mundane. The virtue of such work, however, is that because it doesn’t demand a great deal, it facilitates developing a posture of non-attachment – either to process or product. Hence, it becomes possible to invest it with qualities of spirit empathy, humour, creativity, etc. This tends literally to ‘lighten’ the work itself and to make it enjoyable.
  2. As one gravitates towards positions of responsibility, the primary personal challenge is that of preserving that attitude of non-attachment, the loss of which tends to create ‘heaviness’ and stress. This is particularly true as one moves into areas in which one imagines oneself particularly competent. Excessive ego identification with work comes into play, and both personal satisfaction and productivity tends to suffer as a result. Although work is important – indeed central to personal fulfilment, when it becomes too important both you and it tend to deteriorate. Recent years, however, have witnessed the departure of the original leaders, with subsequent ‘adjustments’. The Foundation continues to become more established and its members more settled, a new situation has arisen. Attitudes of “selfless service” and “community fulfilment” have given way to those of “commitment”, “definite responsibility”, “ecological reconstruction”, “material well-being” and “creative self- expression”, both within the Foundation proper and in the emerging planetary village. This is particularly true of longer term members, especially those with families. To accomodate this situation, the Foundation has created a permanent staff, each of whom receives its basic needs and a modest stipend of £10/week across the board. Those members wishing greater work autonomy and the opportunity for greater material rewards have become independent members, creating businesses which are tangible expressions of the spiritual and educational vision of the community.

Although the key idea here is that the spiritual need not exclude the material, there are significant challenges in reconciling the demands of both and the accompanying pressures towards institutionalisation. Although there have been few material rewards to date, community members have nevertheless enjoyed an unsurpassed quality of collective life. As it focuses increasingly upon expanding and enriching its economic life, the challenge is how to unleash the power of its individual members without compromising or even diminishing the spirit informing the collective. Although the outworkings of this essentially creative problem remain to be seen, it’s significant that Foundation members have, for the most part, chosen to maintain their service commitments and are continually seeking ways to make them more fulfilling, as well as materially rewarding. In contrast, independent members have chosen to eschew the benefits of relative security for those of risk and individual expression, and are doubtless becoming more fully immersed in their work as a result.

The net consequence of this situation is that the community as a whole is experiencing not simply a renewed burst of energy, commitment and enthusiasm, but a virtual enactment of the creative tension between individuals and the collective, capitalism and communism which are in evidence in the world at large. Although these threatened for a period to divide the community no less than it has East and West, they also hold the potential and promise of enacting a creative synthesis between those essentially complementary polarities.

Mary Inglis & Roger Doudna