I was born and grew up within a Glasgow overspill coalmining town in Midlothian. I worked in the same coal mine as my dad after leaving school in 1977 but 11 years later not long before coming to Findhorn I was working in a school in rural Zimbabwe as a teacher 1988-1989. It was a stunning situation bursting with vibrant African life. I learned through meeting Africans that spirituality didn’t equate to weakness.

As a seven year old kid I had an overwhelming spiritual experience which involved me becoming the whole universe. It felt more real than normal reality but it also felt quite catastrophic and I cried myself to sleep each night for a long time afterward. It seemed to me that individuality was an illusion and that if people realised that we were all one, there would be a lot less suffering in the world. I wept in compassion for my fellow man, as a seven year old.

Both of my elder siblings had quite serious mental health problems. I shared a bedroom with my older brother who was diagnosed as schizophrenic. So twenty or so years later, as a young adult, I thought that my childhood spiritual experience might just as likely be evidence of mental illness as it was a real spiritual event but my experience in Zimbabwe encouraged me to believe that I could be strong enough to investigate further. My dilemma was; is spirituality real or did I experience an episode of psychosis.? I needed to know.

Whilst growing up in the seventies I had experienced hostility towards the possibility of direct spiritual experience, it was ‘madness’ was the message I absorbed. As a sixteen year old I dressed as a hippy, was a vegetarian, with long hair living in a conservative ‘Glasgow overspill’ coal mining town. People were contemptuous and completely ignorant of Asian spiritual ideas. I was toying with becoming a Buddhist monk. I tried out TM. My father was ashamed of me. He once said very earnestly to me if I became a Buddhist monk that my mother would have a breakdown and have to go to the local mental hospital. So I didn’t become a monk and instead I became a coal miner like my dad.

Later when I lived in London I joined the Theosophical Society and I attended various classes. I read a book called ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ by EF Schumacher which was a convincing argument against the scientific materialism that had influenced me and made it possible for me to explore spirituality. I came across the idea that people could have direct spiritual experience and try to put it into practice in how they lived their lives even in the UK and I heard that such a place was Findhorn. So I thought in Findhorn I might find an answer to my question, ‘Was my spiritual experience an episode of psychosis or was it a spiritual experience?’ During the six years that I stayed there I was quite confident that I had my answer, which was; ‘No you’re not crazy, spirituality is real.’ Many quite sane people who lived there or passed through had spiritual experiences and of course Eileen Caddy, the spiritual founder of the community was a prominent example of this.

My first very tentative tiptoe into the community was I just camped in the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park in 1991 for a few nights. I was trying to get a feel for Findhorn but I didn’t feel worthy. A few months later in December 1991 I did Experience Week. The spiritual ethos of the culture demonstrated during Experience Week for me was like experiencing being treated with the deepest respect I have ever felt. It was an incredible week of opening for me. The reason I went to Findhorn was to resolve a dilemma but I did so much more than that.

As my train came into Forres train station I felt quite surprisingly like I was going to cry, it was a time of reckoning to me, very serious. And during the forthcoming week I did cry a lot. My pillow was wet in the morning because I had been crying in my sleep. I felt like I had found my spiritual home. Nonetheless I left Findhorn and returned to my flat in London.

A few days later back in London one evening, I went to hear Sir George Trevelyan give a talk at St James Church. He very eloquently described the universe as being filled with love. The next morning I woke up at 4am and began meditating. Inspired by Sir George I kept repeating like a mantra, the words that had come to me in Findhorn during my Experience Week; ‘ I accept love’. I began to feel sensations like my body’s mass was increasing and a feeling of accelerating silence both of which had preceded my childhood spiritual experience. The sensations intensified and I became very frightened but I managed to keep going until, it was as though I could observe myself from the outside. When I breathed out there was a circle of light in front of me, when I breathed in there was a circle of light above and behind me. It was like a halo but my whole body was shaking in terror. Then the words were put into my mind almost like a postcard was written; ‘I beg to join the Findhorn Community’. I didn’t know what to do, or whether it was mental illness or a spiritual experience.

Nevertheless I tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist but there was a three month long wait, so instead I sent a letter to The Findhorn Foundation. I told them what happened in my meditation and I received an application form for the membership programme in the mail. I felt quite pleased with the form, at least there was a note with it and they hadn’t completely dismissed me. One of my Experience Week focalisers had suggested to me that I try to stay at Newbold House. So I did.

I stayed at Newbold House for two years 1992 to 1994. The way it was managed at the time, there was a lot of attention given to Vipassana meditation which I practised two or three times nearly every day. I also did several retreats which involved meditating for ten hours per day for 10 days. It gave me more confidence in managing my thoughts and feelings. I was asked to co-focalise a workshop which involved going hiking to Nepal. After that I went to India.

When I came back to Newbold House from Nepal I learned co-counselling which enabled me to really go into my emotions. I was quite surprised and amazed by this at the time. It gave me access to my emotions in a way that I never had previously. Nevertheless after two years at Newbold I thought it was time to move to The Park. I rented a caravan and got a job working in the Universal Hall and a place on the LCG programme, it was 1994.

One milestone happened in 1994. I did The Mastery workshop and that really opened me up. I performed a poem. Whilst I was rehearsing it, a woman I liked a lot, was watching me and she had burst out laughing. I was quite hurt by this but she said given the things I was talking about I should be shouting not quietly speaking. So when I performed it at the Mastery in front of twenty people I shouted it out. One man who had participated in the Mastery was organising a sharing sometime later to raise money for the Steiner School asked me to perform my poem again. So I did, it was the most intimate of poems. Commenting on my performance in front of 300 people someone said to me that I had bared my soul. Which felt about right. With my new found access to my emotions whilst living at The Park I got into performance and writing. Whilst working in the Hall I won an award for writing a play that led to my play being professionally produced at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. A bus load of people went from The Park to see it. My play was partly about coming to Findhorn. I really felt like I was part of the community by then. Around that time I was invited to attend a dinner held for a programme called Essence of the Arts and the focalisers introduced me as an example of the success the community had in helping people get in touch with their artistic potential. I was very flattered but the strongest feeling was that I had was the sense of belonging and being accepted. I also acted in two plays at Minton House and I performed songs and poems in the Universal Hall. Before coming to Findhorn it would have been impossible for me to have done those artistic things. I thought I had found my vocation and so it was time I moved on. I eventually left to do a Masters in writing for Film and TV. I felt a need to prove myself to myself by going out into the world.

I didn’t have the focus or discipline for writing, as it happened, so I started a company taking people on yoga study holidays to India. Later I became a teacher and taught in Thailand, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Myanmar and China. I bicycled solo from north Thailand to China and on another occasion across Laos. Findhorn had opened the world to me in different ways. I wanted to live life for self-fulfilment and growth. Findhorn boosted my self-confidence and my spirit was tremendously lifted.
Findhorn isn’t dreamy, it’s very practical in that it approaches people with a critical eye; ‘They fit or they don’t fit’. A big thing in my favour in terms of being accepted was I was very convinced that Findhorn was real on a spiritual level. My spiritual experience was proof to me that Findhorn was a spiritual centre. It seemed like a real spiritual experience and it was about Findhorn therefore Findhorn had to be real too. It was a very personal story, I hope that is OK.

My thirties in Findhorn were the happiest time in my life. I experienced personal growth and learned something about spirituality. But the most precious thing was the way I connected to other people. I made friends with people at the time. Funny thing was they were often working-class.

Of course there were struggles also, I had conflicts with one or two people and had to go for mediation and therapy once or twice. I have taught at four universities and three other teaching jobs I taught yoga for two years in Edinburgh. Then later I trained as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and worked in that capacity. During the training I thought I had already learned so much of CBT in an experiential way whilst at Findhorn.

I found it possible to decide whether I had a mental health problem or spirituality was a real thing that I had had an experience of. Many people at Findhorn had childhood spiritual experiences. None of them seemed mad. Findhorn provided that encouragement that I needed to believe in spiritual reality which was directly connected to my belief in myself. I had first arrived at The Park in 1991 with a lot of fears and bottled up emotions. By the end in 1998 I had faced some of my fears and learned to manage these to a much greater extent. It’s like spirituality as I experienced it at Findhorn gave me more courage to overcome fears and to try out new things. I loved travelling and working in other countries people have said they would have been too afraid to do that.

I had the honour to meet Eileen Caddy on a few occasions. I believed in her spiritual reality. Her truth was a beacon that drew many people to build the Findhorn Community. On the whole, people in Findhorn are driven by kindness, which works wonders.