This article was first published in Network News Issue 24, Autumn 2000.
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…continues to inspire our lives here as well as the lives of those who travelled home after the conference. Odyssey, a beautiful magazine published in Wynberg, South Africa, gave us permission to reprint this article written by Johannesburg reflexologist, Sally Allen.
The atmosphere was electric in the Universal Hall on the first day of the Angel Conference. The Angel of Findhorn was overriding the conference, and this could be felt by many of us. I surrendered to the flowing energy of beings of great beauty that I sensed dancing around us. Every now and then I could feel the delicious tingle of a little tickle across my back. It was something I wouldn’t have noticed, but Diana Cooper, a key speaker and author of A Little Light on Angels, pointed out that angels touch you in different ways.
An aeroplane flying overhead drew my gaze upwards to the glass dome in the centre of the Universal Hall. My gaze tracked the sunlight piercing the glass above. Suddenly I remembered a vivid dream I’d had more than 20 years ago, and realised with a shock that I was sitting in the very hall that I had dreamt about.
The seven-day Angel Conference attracted more than 300 people from 37 countries – including psychologists, ministers and healers. From the time of its creation almost 40 years ago, the Findhorn community in northeast Scotland has actively cooperated with angels and nature spirits in building its community and educational programmes which draw about 4,000 residential visitors a year.
The main conference speakers included Dorothy Maclean, now aged 83 (who, together with Peter and Eileen Caddy, was one of the original founders of the Findhorn community); Caroline Myss (medical intuitive, teacher, motivator and author); Dr William Bloom (a leading angelologist and teacher of holistic energy work); and Diana Cooper, well known to South Africans as “the angel lady”.
The aim of the conference was to put people in contact with their angels in a practical and grounded way and I found the energy at Findhorn was very conducive to feeling their presence. As Diana Cooper said: “You only have to use three magic words: Please help me. Aside from your own guardian angel, other angels are around you every single moment. Ask only for the highest good, and this will attract other angels to you as well. There is a solution to every problem. We hold our problems on a human level. Lift the energy and the angels will inspire you to transmute the problems.”
Caroline Myss told the audience: “Don’t live the life of an ordinary mortal – it just isn’t normal. You need to learn to manage your own soul, rather than have the outer world manage it for you. If you think in line with the physical world, you won’t reach the angel stage. Angels are here to maximise our potential. They come bearing messages. With every new awakening there is a transformation, and we have to go through the process. If we want that clear guidance from our angels, we really need to listen. Instead, we stay in jobs that make us sick and continue to live in destructive relationships. We keep getting inner guidance – and still we don’t listen. Your angel gives up offering inner prompts and suddenly, for example, your boss fires you. You think it is the end of the world, but it turns out to be the most marvellous thing that ever happened to you. Guidance will sometimes hit the ego, and may feel like an unbelievable act of humiliation, but the leaden ego needs to be melted before it can turn into gold. So follow the guidance you are given. Continue to listen, be quiet and enter into the angelic harmony.”
Dr William Bloom is considered to be a leading expert on devas and angels. “I am not a psychic,” he said. “I don’t see things, but I do feel things. Develop your intuitive powers and learn to feel the atmosphere, and to sense whether something is right. If you’re going to plant something, where does it feel right to do so? Feel if it’s warm or cold. Is there a breeze? You don’t have to be a psychic to do this. The angel is just a form – what it feels like is the issue. You know the beautiful atmosphere you sense around a church, a mountain, a lake. Now imagine that the church, mountain or lake disappears and you are left with the spirit of its peace. That is what I mean about spirit. Surrender the tension of seeing life as a struggle and see it in terms of flow. The angels and devas hold all creation together. Pause and reflect. Always pause and acknowledge the presence of an angel, and in the pause you will allow yourself to connect with it. All you need is the tiniest possibility that it is possible – and that is enough to make the connection.”
Angel illustration by Tordis Schlag incorporating the original drawing by Barbara Thomas
Findhorn really brings you into tune with nature. You become amazingly aware of your thoughts, your dreams, your actions. You suddenly understand things like never to pick a flower unless for a specific purpose; never to pick a stone from a sacred ring; and the importance of washing your own plate. If you had never seen the stars in the sky before, you would look upon them as miracles. We need to recognise that we ourselves are miracles, and treat people and nature with reverence.
Dorothy Maclean, whose work in communicating directly with the realms of nature spirits and angels was key in turning the barren Findhorn caravan park into a flourishing Garden of Eden all those years ago, told the conference that not everyone experiences these energies in the same way. “We are all different – some people hear voices, some write, some see, some feel. What matters is to put love first in your life. The beauty of nature can take you into a deeper aspect of yourself. There are angels that oversee and look after everything. They are not only in nature, but also look after the cities. There are always places of beauty in the city. Find a little flower bed or a tree and tune into the angel of the city. Don’t use the city for everything and then hate the city angel; love the city angels – they need our love. We can all contact nature in our own way. Ask and you shall receive. Break through your disbelief and bring God and angels into your everyday life, living with gratitude and appreciation of everything around you.”
Dorothy told a delightful story from the old days when she was working with Peter Caddy. He asked her to remove the caterpillars from the gooseberry bushes – without harming them. Dorothy couldn’t think what to do and started to remove them and put them into bottles, and then place them on the rubbish dump. She hated worms and caterpillars and removed them with loathing. Every day they came back again. After tuning into the nature kingdom, she was told to remove them with love, explaining in her heart why she was doing it. The next day all the gooseberry bushes from which she had removed the caterpillars with love and understanding were free of them. All the bushes she had cleared with distaste still had caterpillars.
I asked Dorothy about the violence in South Africa and was simply told: “Don’t focus on the negative. The most powerful force is love.”
The challenge for anyone coming back to the denser energy of Johannesburg and city life after such an inspiring conference is to hold on to the openness and unconditional love that is part of the sacred Findhorn experience. The first thing I noticed when I arrived back was the aggression of the drivers. I could feel their anger. But then I put a sticker on my car which reads: “Never drive faster than your angel can fly,” and no one has hooted at me since.
Sally Allen, Johannesburg
You can look up Odyssey magazine at https://odysseymagazine.co.za/
Guest Authors are contributors who are not COIF members (for various reasons).
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