I am Michael Drummond Davidson (aka Monocle) one of the stone masons on the Findhorn Universal Hall.

I had one eye and sported a monocle and people called me Monocle because there were 3 Davidsons and 5 Michaels living at Findhorn.

I wore it because I had survived a near death experience in a mine collapse; and I could be who I wanted to be.

We were well read.”Be here now“ Ram Dass; Carlos Castaneda; Johnathan Livingston Seagull; Carl Jung; We revered Buckminster Fuller; Alice Bailey, Rudolph Steiner, Blavatsky and the Whole Earth Catalogue.

We loved the work and paintings of Turner and Roerich. Eileen Caddy, we didn’t know; others did.

In the mid 1970’s youth was looking for new consciousness; a new way of being.

People were going to India; Bali; Morocco, Greece and the South of France or the Dalmatian coast

Young people  looking for something different from the cold crass commercialism of the plastic culture that awaited their futures in  blighted cities and in the predictable  mortgage, job and marriage. Nobody knew what the new would look like. We knew the new existed in songs: John Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Come together” helped us piece it together what it would feel like.  Joni Mitchell defined it or us  “We are stardust, we are golden, and we have to get ourselves back to the Garr-den”. Many more laid out the wonderful world we could all create.

I had worked many jobs before coming to Findhorn.

I was a roustabout on oil rigs; I worked the NY docks on both waterfronts, and worked as a miner when I was involved in mine collapse and had an out of body experience.

We were working nights; up along the Pennsylvanian border and about a half mile underground,

I never heard a thing. Over 40 tons came down and it was just as simple as someone turning off lights in the room; Death is that subtle.  I journeyed. I left my body. The soul gets triggered its time to go  – you’re done here . Note to self. Death is easy. Dying hard. It goes that  quickly.

Everything is left behind – your ego, your intellect, all your narratives about who you say who you are. Your big me and little me; your personality and your character at large  plus  your conscious and unconscious states of being all left behind like an ill-fitting suit that’s no longer fits and its time to go….

I saw many things.  The best analogy is the Egyptian book of the dead; because it’s all there.

The heart is weighed against the white feather of Truth. So, unto thine own self be true because  there is karma; the inside track from my journey is the take away that the heart has wisdom;  so have heart practices in which to discover your center; because your center is not your thoughts. If you are fear-based the mind will make poor decisions.

On this journey I was reunited with my mother who had passed just two years before

She was in a deep shadowed park, by a river that glittered in diamonds of white light; there was no movement except the the light of the river and all I could feel was her overwhelming connection to me with motherly love which resided in a perfect  state of bliss.

I was connected to the beloved through her and couldn’t want for more – it was that perfect and beautiful.  I never wanted to leave.

It wasn’t mine to let go of my body. Suddenly in a vortex of energy I crashed back into my body only to find it crushed and broken; and with a cough of blood, I came to just in time to hear the miners digging for me.

They were above me somewhere. I could hear the clatter of their picks and shovels and hear their muffled curses in their calls for me. In my mind’s eye see their blackened faces and naked sweat-stained torsos working their bars into the pitch of rock and creating a tunnel down to get me.

My helmet light was still on laying by my side and what I saw when I came to wasn’t pretty. I was entombed and twisted between two heavy boulders under a twisted I beam (that saved me) from the total collapse.

The rest of the business came down upon that and created a tomb I was in.

The helmet light was feeble yet still working. The first thing I saw was the femur bone of my left leg sticking through the pants leg.  How bizarre, I thought (I wasn’t in pain yet) I was unable to  accept this reality as I had just come from being with my mother in perfection.

So as I looked around, there was a war going on within me about which reality I  was accepting as this was a nightmare . I was convinced that this was a nightmare and that I was dreaming  from which I will soon wake up.

I prayed I would wake up. I was here and I wasn’t waking up out of any dream.

I began to feel and to  suffer because I couldn’t move.

There was a disgusting mass of sinew and jelly on my chest (my left eye).

It made no sense what it was and how it got there (my left eye orbit had been cleft out by a rock)

Not good;  not good. My jaw was broken and my teeth were no longer aligned. Something warm caught my attention on my neck and invited my hand to see what it was and in doing so I discovered I could put my entire  hand up under my scalp to the top of the cranium.

This was not a happy place to be  so I quickly retreated and listened to the men dig closer.

Soon there was a hole in the ceiling about a dozen feet away and a face popped through. His helmet search light landed on me and a great call went up.

Soon there was some yelling to widen the hole and I watched  it become wider; then more shouts and a man was lowered down on a rope.  I recognized him yet when he crawled over to me, he took one look and threw up… This was not good ….not good I thought.

A second  man  was then  lowered, one who was more seasoned to death. It  was the pit boss. A tough miner who never smiled and always bellowed at others. He reminded me of somebody who  ate rusty nails and could devour other men for breakfast.

I was moved; he came towards me with a deep smile like I was his son; his boy who he cared about. He had tears of gladness in his eyes as if he was meeting my soul.  He  cradled my head and gave me drink from his canteen brushing a lock of hair from my bloodied forehead assuring me “We’re here for you Lad, We’re going to get you out of here but you got to stay with me now and don’t go to sleep.”

“Stay with me” and he put two fingers to his eyes then pointed them back to my eyes.

His eyes shone into my soul. We didn’t really know one another but tonight made up for a thousand years. He barked up orders back up the hole and called for the gurney to be lowered down.

I had lost a lot of blood and wanted to sleep. He gave me a shake “Stay awake son. Stay with me.”

More men were dropping into the hole and their search lights filled the room.

The gurney was lowered by rope in a pool of light. It is in the shape of an Egyptian sarcophagus only it is hand crafted in wire in the shape of a man.  The men then circled me; some unable to look at me. Sweat streaked their faces and chests and outlined the curve of their backsides in the dampness of their task.

They surrounded me and gently lifted me into the gurney. There, coming down from above was this pool of celestial light in the darkness. Lined up from the bottom of the hole they dug was this chain of miners.  On the count of three  I was hoisted up out of the darkness and into the light. Up up I was passed, hand over hand; arm over arm, each one muttering prayers or assurances that I would one day be rejoined with them again….

Half mile is a long way to go and  most of it was by freight car until I reached the top.

By then I  had passed out and was mistaken for dead. Someone pulled a sheet over my head and placed me in the mine’s morgue on a slab.

That’s when I awoke  and started yelling. They say I’ve been yelling ever since.

Epilogue:

I was in a long time of recovery. I had a long time to reflect on what this out of body experience was and it wasn’t until I got to Findhorn that I began to process the spiritual aspects of what I had happened and where my soul had taken me.

It was  curious that I awoke on the slab and stated yelling  at almost the same hour of my birth twenty two years before (3:20 am March 22) and that I was reunited with my mother at almost  the same time of my birth and reunited in  a perfect state of absolute bliss.

Findhorn was able to give me solid support for the spiritual in a journey I was on and  that few had ever experienced  or understood.

It was of great relief to talk with people who had knowledge of the soul and what its purpose was.

Like the gardeners I eventually became expert at my craft. In this craft work we intuitively listen with the intuitive mirror. Healers do this as the Stone speaks to you.

Thus began my passion for geology and all things stone. By the time I got to New York there was a billion dollar industry taking off for the preservation of historic stone and I got to work on some of the great iconic land marks which made my career in historic preservation. I love my work and it took me all over the world

By 1976 I was finished with recovery and able to swim a mile a day.

Michael davidson