(Click here for an overview of posts in the series The Art of Living in Community.)

William Bloom’s comments [in First Steps: An Introduction to Spiritual Practice] apply to any aspirant, anywhere. The Community has of course developed its own specific rituals of which this is a brief summary.

Work as Love in Action by Roy MacVicar

(From ‘The Living Classrooms of the Findhorn Foundation’, Foundation pamphlet edited by Roy McVicar, circa 1978)

A vital aspect of Community life, in both senses of the word, is the role of work as a form of spiritual practice. A great deal of what we do can be defined as the sacralisation of the ordinary, and this has been interpreted in many ways throughout different phases of our collective life.

One of Peter Caddy’s famous catchphrases about community building is his ‘Three Ps – Patience, Persistence and Perseverance.’ In the 1970s the importance of perfection in work was added to this. At all times the value of service as a spiritual path has been stressed. Most of these notions lead back to the title of this section – ‘work is love in action’. We have from the very beginning been a working community – a place of action where the word of God directs the hand of humanity, and the dreams of the soul are made real by the work of the flesh.

Work, however hard or monotonous it may seem, is something which can be done with love and joy when it is done with a new level of consciousness. When you wash a floor or polish a table or clean a pot, you can realise your essential oneness with that thing, see that it also has a divinity within it so that when you make it clear and bright you release that divinity. It will reflect to you the love and joy which you have poured into it. Work is one of the most effective ways in which you can demonstrate a change of consciousness’.

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Subsequent sections on meditation and attunement below describe a number of techniques for achieving and maintaining the ‘vertical alignment’ with the sacred which engenders this kind of joyful synergy in relation to the mundane, ‘horizontal plane’ tasks that confront us on a day-to-day basis.

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Attunement by R. Ogilvie Crombie & William Bloom

(Roc at a Focalisers’ meeting September 1974. Foundation Early Study Paper)

There are different energies which are channelled in the Community because every single person who is a member at some time or other will be channelling energies into it. It is going in many ways because one thing energy does is build up to what I can only refer to as the energy field of Findhorn. Of course groups do the same thing. Now the question that really came up was the fact that the construction group seemed to be doing a lot of attunements. There was an attunement of the original group and then a little later perhaps some other people came and joined in and there was another attunement and then later on perhaps there was still another one when another lot came. There are about six or seven attunements during the day.

The fundamental purpose of attunement is to link together so that the group works well. Of course, as soon as you begin to do this the energies are channelled through the group. The question is asked, ‘Well surely there is an unlimited amount of cosmic energy that can be ‘channelled’ and certainly it is not like a reservoir that might be emptied by taking too much out. But a very odd thing happens here. You get together half a dozen people and they link in an attunement, and a certain type of energy is tuned through those six people which is for the purpose of helping in the construction of the building. A little later, three others come along. The idea is we just take them into the group and add them to this attunement and this will help. What actually happens is that you break down the original attunement. You are breaking the link because you are introducing three other people. You begin all over again. If you do another attunement with nine people, there will be a different energy pattern because the group is slightly larger and made up of different people. The result is that instead of having one uniform field for working with construction, there are three different ones which do not necessarily harmonise; so a state of disharmony may be introduced instead of group attunement.

What you want is one pattern which is exactly the same for the whole departmental group. The only way you can achieve this is by not having different attunements made up of different people in the group. The extra people who come along will be absorbed into the energy pattern that has been created by the initial attunement.

The amount of energy that is going through those particular groups becomes quite considerable, and it is actually far more than what is needed for the actual purpose at the moment. It seems in some ways to be an infringement of a cosmic law for any one particular group to take more energy than it requires. It nearly always happens that some other group will be robbed of it, not because there is not plenty of it but because the balance has been upset in a way. Too much energy has gone into this particular place so it will be made up from somewhere else. The result is that the whole field of the Findhorn Community is put out of balance.

Channelling energies is not something that can be done in a thoughtless way by saying, “Right, I am going to be a channel for energy and I am going to get a tremendous energy down for something or other.” You have to remember that somebody else may have to pay back that energy if you take more than you need for the purpose.

If you are working with a group in the morning, a certain type of energy pattern would be done for that. You finish your work there and that is that. No more of that energy will come through you. Then you go to another group or have another meeting. There is a different kind of energy probably needed there, so you would attune with that group.

Question: We often have the idea of attuning at the end of a meeting.
Roc: That is probably a good thing, because this means you cut off. It is like turning the current off when you have finished.

Question: Have we got to the point where we really have to hold our consciousness to the quality of energy we are invoking?
Roc: You have got to know your needs, and what you can do is consciously think this is an attunement for an energy that is correct for the particular work you are doing. The power of the mind is very strong,
and you will tune into the right source by simply holding the thought.

Question: When you have a stable number of people and sometime during the day the activities become dispersed, would it be the correct thing to come together and attune?
Roc: The best thing to do is to come together and hold hands to focus the energy again. Don’t have too long an attunement. If there is a proper amount of attunement and harmony in the group, there should never be any feeling of pressure on any individuals within the group. If there is a sign of pressure, then that is a sign that there is something wrong somewhere.

Question: When we attune as a group in maintenance, we have a picture of the being of the group developing and growing. It is as if our energy is principally channelled into the growing of that being more than it is into our daily work because until we know that being, we don’t feel we know our direction.
Roc: The purpose of attuning to anything is to call down energies for certain work that is to be done. If you are going to channel it into a being or something of that sort, you are going to build that up and the energy is not going to go into the work you are doing. I see a lot of danger in this idea of thinking of the group as a sort of group soul rather than thinking of the group as an integrated group of individuals. Once you begin to think of this entity or this group soul, that is the being, there is a terrible danger here of this becoming a thought form. A thought form is not a real being. It is created in a projection of the different people in the group. It is much better to think of the group as individuals forming a unity and not to think of it too much as a being.

* * *

(From ‘Meditation in a Changing World’ by William Bloom page 114.)

After one workshop with members of the Findhorn Foundation, the group I was working with drew up some helpful guidelines concerning attunement:

1. Attunement is never simply a ritual done out of habit.
2. The focaliser of the attunement always demonstrates:
   1.  Caring for the group;
   2. Sensitivity to the work to be done.
3. The focaliser therefore:
   1. Clearly and caringly brings the group together in the here and now;
   2. Sensitively attunes the group to the work to be done.
4. At the end of the period of work, it is helpful if there is a completion or ‘detuning’ — a holding of hands, a ‘thank you’ — or whatever is appropriate.

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Attunement – Weekly Feedback sessions by Alex Walker

Weekly departmental attunements have a variety of purposes. Apart from the obvious ones of creating a time of collective meeting to discuss any relevant business and/or to enhance the social interactions of group members there are at least three other important aspects of these gatherings.

The first is to ensure that any working department meditates together a minimum of once a week, so enhancing the individuals’ attunement to each other, the tasks in hand and to the divine will.

Secondly, they are a time when each member of the department has the opportunity to offer a ‘personal sharing’ meaning a deep (and yet not over-long) description of any outer happenings in their life, but more importantly, of their inner feelings, beliefs, challenges and aspirations.

Thirdly, these are occasions for a conscious opening to any feedback or reflection on this sharing from the other members of the department. A wide variety or spiritual and psychological techniques are brought into play on such occasions, depending on the skills, interests and aptitudes of the participants. These might include exercises to identify areas where someone is ‘projecting’ their fears, desires or other feelings onto someone else, attempts to reveal  ‘blind spots’ in individual awareness, and a myriad of ‘group consciousness’ exercises.

The value of meditation should be evident from the papers above, but the personal sharing and feedback aspects of attunements are just as important in their own way. It may be possible to reach enlightenment by sitting alone in a cave, but for most of us, our attempts to better ourselves have to work in the context of our friends and colleagues. This kind of interaction is then an opportunity to discover whether what we are learning about ourselves and the world is being put into practice in an appropriate way.

Indeed, students of the Foundation archives, or other early source material can readily determine that due to the tiny and far flung nature of the emerging spiritual networks of the 1950s and 60s, one of the most important aspects of our modern spiritual work, the give and take of personal feedback as a mirror to the soul, was virtually absent. After all, if the contacts with whom you can share a secret part of your world are few and far between the last thing you want to do is offend them! This isolation is therefore responsible for the apparently eccentric nature of much of the British spiritual movement of the period up to the late 1970s. No such excuses can be proffered for today’s excesses.

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Attunement by David Spangler

(Foundation Early Study Paper – amended)

What is Attunement?
To practise Attunement, we begin with understanding the concept of oneness.  This does not mean that everything is the same; it means that there is no real separation, that everything exists within a unified field of being.  The microcosm that we represent within us duplicates in all its aspects the vaster realms of Life and Consciousness that apparently lie outside and beyond us in the macrocosm.  To communicate with a level of Life apparently outside us, we simply discover and attune to its corresponding reality within us.  We realise that there is no separation, that essentially we are one with that level and we accept that oneness as the reality. We can draw an illustration of this from music.  Middle C and its first harmonic, the next higher C note, are the same tonal quality but separated by an octave of energy.  The two notes played in the same way possess equal amplitude but a different frequency of expression.  The higher note is moving faster as a sound wave, hence we hear it as a higher pitched sound.  Though most people can differentiate between middle C and its higher harmonics, such as high C, they are still the same note and occupy the same tonal position in the scale.  Because of this, whenever one C is struck, the other C’s of higher octaves resonate in harmony and can be heard by one whose ear is sensitively trained. So with the universe within us.  In the macrocosm of our individual being, we are harmonically related to all the macrocosm which represents higher octaves of what is within us.   If we manifest a certain macrocosmic quality, such as love, then there is a thrill of resonance throughout the universe of the love quality on all its levels of expression, on all of the octaves of its being.

Attunement and Resonance
With this understanding, we can begin to practise attunement in our lives.  With its practice, we find ourselves in increasing communication with higher and vaster realms of Life, both vertically in terms of higher frequency consciousness and horizontally in terms of physical life that surrounds us as fellow human beings and the lives within nature.  Unlike old-style communication which is usually seen as a flow between two or more centres or people and which thereby maintains the concept of separation, Attunement is communication through communion, through recognising the reality of oneness that has always been there.  There is no flow between – there is oneness with. Attunement works on the principle of resonance which in turn depends on action and living manifestation.  Such phenomena as channelling and mediumship mainly depended on the ability to contact another level of Life as a separate thing outside the life of the psychic, just as prayer was communication with a God outside and separate from the individual life.  This contact could be turned on or off when a message of help was or was not desired, much like using a telephone or a radio.  Attunement is entirely different.  It requires the manifestation and expression within the life of the individual of the qualities to which he wishes to attune on less restricted levels of being and consciousness.  It cannot be turned off.  Oneness must be a living reality within oneself, not just an idea.

Attunement with Love
Let us suppose that I wish to contact the awareness of limitless Love within creation.  Using old methods of communication, I might try through meditation to contact some Being, whom I would consider separate from myself, who would represent this Awareness to me.  Using Attunement, a different approach entirely must be used.  First, I realised that this Awareness of limitless Love is not outside me;  it has a lower octave counterpart within me.  I must find that counterpart and play it, like striking middle C in order to hear through resonance a higher C note.  In other words, I must begin expressing on human levels a love released from limitations of prejudice, fear, hatred, separation.  I must relate to the world around me as if all parts of it were my Beloved.  I must see the reality of this love within me and my life.  I set the vibration of love throughout my microcosmic life. Then, in my moments of silence, I can rise on the currents of this resonance.  I attract the higher octave counterparts of love to my awareness or, more accurately, by experiencing love in my microcosmic life I become sensitive to experiencing it in my macrocosmic life.  The barriers of separation in my consciousness dissolve.  There is no more within, no more without.  There is only what I AM – the oneness of all.

Live this Attunement
By experiencing this in times of silence, I increase my sense of oneness during my times of outer activity until silence and activity, action and non-action, themselves become one and I live and move in complete attunement to all about me on all levels.  Through this communion I communicate perfectly with the universe.  Thus we have the New Age method of prayer, of communication with vaster and freer levels of Life.  We attune, not through contact with something separate, but with the oneness of all life within us and about us. We live this Attunement.  It must be lived, acted upon, expressed if the necessary resonance that disintegrates the barriers of apparent separation is to be developed.  Throughout the world, men and women are responding to the new revelations of the oneness of life and of creation.  As they do so, Attunement will become an increasing man.  Greater than Prayer, which we turn off and on according to our need,  Attunement is walking, working, living every moment in the living presence of God which is Oneness. More and more we will see and hear people being living revelations of truth, people who can say with perfect authority and knowledge, ” I  AM the Life within all, the Love uniting all, the revelation of Truth, for in my life I resonate with All in All, and God and I are One.”

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Focalisation by Alex Walker

Nearly every department of the Foundation functions as a group, and each group has a focaliser. The focaliser is not intended to be a leader in the sense of someone who gives orders, but is rather to be someone who, by virtue of their ability to attune to the needs of the whole, achieves respect.

This does not mean that the focaliser has all the answers. Indeed the focaliser could well be someone who knows no more or even less about the work in hand than any of the others involved. If the task is one which can be achieved by the skills of the department members then the focaliser might well consider other factors. Is the work in alignment with the whole through some form of attunement? Would the work be better served if there was music to listen to? Does someone not involved in the task need to be informed of its progress. Should we have a tea break, and should I make the tea? These are all questions a focaliser, or someone aspiring to focalisation should be asking him or herself.

The group should of course be one composed of those who are learning to receive a direction from the God within and who are able to blend that personal direction with a vision of the good of the whole. Note however that departments are not intended to be groups working democratically by majority votes – although this may happen from time to time. Given that conflict of some kind is almost inevitable, the question of how group decisions should be taken is addressed a series of posts summarised in Decision-Making Structures.

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Festivals by Alex Walker

A wide variety of creative offerings for various festivals have been made available to the Community but David Spangler’s book on this subject remains the definitive text. In it he emphasises the solstices and equinoxes and offers definitions of their symbolic meaning. The descriptions are applicable to the northern hemisphere, these flows of energy being balanced by their opposite in the south.

Winter Solstice – The Festival of Identity. The time when we can powerfully invoke the awakening of seed of divinity lying dormant within us all

Spring Equinox – The Festival of Resurrection. A celebration of the triumph of light over darkness.

Summer Solstice – The Festival of Manifestation. A time to give thanks for the blessings of nature

Autumn Equinox – The Festival of Transformation. Michaelmas is the ‘gateway to creativity’ when we can examine our individual and collective ability to bring forth that which we need in our lives.

It is revealing that in the Foundation of the early 70s, with its short term membership and seven day working week, these festivals were not just exclusively Foundation affairs, but well attended by Foundation members. In the nineties there are more distractions, and the festivals have tended to become Community-wide celebrations, and attract a relatively smaller proportion of this group.

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Ceremony by R. Ogilvie Crombie

(Edited extract from ‘Festival, Findhorn, November 5th 1970’; Foundation archives.)

There may be, in fact, I know there are people who think that ceremony and ritual belongs to the old age and that there will be no such thing in the new. Now this is very wrong, because we know, this is not my opinion, this is direct guidance, that ceremony and ritual will play a very large part in the New Age, but it will be New Age ceremony and ritual.

Ritual must be sincere and it must be meaningful; it is become crystallised, so that it is simply going through certain gestures, certain words, certain actions, which are done mechanically, not from the heart, with no meaning, then it is useless. That is why an absolutely fixed type of ritual will not be used in the New Age.

Ritual will be inspired ritual in the moment and in this case it will retain its meaning and have an effect. Now ritual may seem nonsense to people, but it isn’t. Words used, gestures used aren’t simply something on this physical level, they are creating patterns on a higher level, and they are blending in with patterns which are already existing on a higher level and therefore they play a very important part in the process of manifestation.

In the older time there were very fixed rituals laid down, with the right kind of robes, the right kind of formulas, all sorts of things, [In future] they will be much more flexible, but there are one or two things which will be used in ritual that are very important.

The first one that is of importance is the candle. Now a candle, when it is lit, symbolises light, and it symbolises more than light, it symbolises the truth. Therefore a lit candle is taking truth, light, into dark places. This is the important symbolism of the candle. Also, it is a living flame. You cannot get the same effect with an electric bulb or anything like that, that you can with the living flame, and there are certain cases where the flame must be present.

Also in ritual at certain times, incense will be used. Now this may seem like a lot of “Oh yes, nice to have some smoke and smell and so on,” but why is incense used – what is the use of it? This goes back to very early times. Incense is smoke ascending upwards. It is beautifully scented smoke, or it should be. The Magi brought incense to the infant Christ. Incense represents purification, as well as this ascending effect. It is used to symbolise this purification, and if you burn incense in a room where there are any entities that should not be there, that is one of the best ways of driving them out, because they do not like it. Therefore, at certain times it is important.

In a centre like the Foundation, where co-operation is being asked with the nature forces, and that is contact with the elemental kingdoms, it is important to have representatives of the four kingdoms, fire, air, earth and water. These we have here.

So there are certain things which are [to be] used, but the main thing is to remember that it isn’t just a lot of nonsense. It has a very, very real purpose and it has a very, very real meaning, and therefore it is important not to think of it as being an empty piece of nonsense, and remember that it does have this very deep meaning. More than that, it does something which is very important, helping in this process of manifestation, and helping in this process of co-operation.

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Retreat by Alex Walker

It is certainly a misconception to imagine that the Community is essentially a place of retreat, in the sense of somewhere divorced from the realities of everyday living and offering a sense of peace and quietude. Findhorn and Forres may be geographically remote from the major cities of Europe, but quite apart form the fact of a major NATO airbase on our doorstep, the reality of day to day life is often one of engagement in group activities, hard work, and confrontation of the self.

This is not to say that times of retreat are of little import. The Foundation has a property on Iona – the house of ‘Traigh Bhan’ (meaning white beach) for this very purpose. Organised retreats also happen from time to time at the Park, at Newbold and at Minton House for example. They form an integral part of spiritual self development, and while we may admire those who seem to be able to work 52 weeks a year, we may also wonder if they are perhaps to some degree hiding from themselves in their work. The mind is a wily opponent and periods of contemplation, solitary or otherwise, are an important adjunct to any spiritual practice.

Other Practices

There are many other practices and traditions that individuals in the Community draw on, including sweat lodges, sacred dance, specific meditation techniques, Taizé singing, and so on. A number of the most common ones, such as drawing ‘angel cards’ have been derived from the ‘Game of Transformation’.

One set of practices is however virtually absent from Community life – those concerned with evangelising. This is not to say that the Community wishes to hide its light under a metaphorical bushel, nor does it deny the need to bring its activities to the market in appropriate ways. The rejection of unsolicited attempts to persuade individuals of the value of the Community’s work seems more related to an unease with rigidity of belief often required to feel comfortable with such methods of persuasion, and a feeling that those who have learned a little of the spiritual nature of the world do not need to try and change it by exhortation, but seek to do so through the example of their lives.

One other activity is particularly worthy of mention, namely Community Meetings. Such events are nor normally thought of as forms of spiritual practice per se, but they are nonetheless an important part of Community life. These events are discussed in more detail in a series of posts summarised in Decision-Making Structures.

Rules

It is important to understand that what the Community is attempting to teach is not a set of rules, or a specific moral code, but rather guidelines for developing a sense of inner listening. Given that it is expected that those involved with the Foundation will adhere to the laws of Scotland, there are only two formal rules for Foundation Membership. 1) No use of illegal drugs. 2) No smoking in public places.

Prospective members are also of course asked to complete various introductory courses before they apply.

Given that the Community has no formal membership or structure at present there are no constraints of any kind on the Community as such, although it has been suggested that the minimum criteria for a suitable member of the Community are:
a) a regular spiritual practice.
b) an openness to giving and receiving personal feedback.