From November 13-17, 2006, almost 100 people from the Findhorn Community, as well as 19 guides, also all present or past members of the community, gathered together in the Universal Hall to play the Planetary Game. The Game was focused around the following purpose, areas and Angels:

Personally and collectively,
we intend to cultivate presence and coherence in the areas of
Leadership, Power and Rank – Angel of Healing
Local Economy and Money – Angel of Tenderness
Planetary Role and Outreach – Angel of Resilience
Well-Being and Creativity – Angel of Wisdom
Ecology and Co-creation with Nature – Angel of Intention

Group Angel: Love

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Right from the start of the Community Planetary Game, the Planetary Role and Outreach Area was an influential and driving force in the Game.

A Synergy square just two moves into the Path plunged us right into it, and precipitated significant movement all round. On this square, the player is asked to share an example of a time their contribution significantly catalysed group movement, after which all Playing Areas move forward on their paths. First the Player took us back 25 years, as he spoke about the conference he organised on Building a Planetary Village in 1981… a conference that provided the impetus shortly afterwards for the Foundation to decide to go ahead with the purchase of the Caravan Park at a time when the community was deeply in debt. It was an affirmation against the odds in the work of this centre, and a daring commitment to its future potential. A fund-raising appeal was launched and thousands of people responded, raising the bulk of the money needed to buy the land upon which until then the community had just been tenants and caretakers.

It felt as if the Game was pointing our attention to the seed impulse for today’s planetary village work, and asking us to honour not only that initial impulse but also the people who responded to and acted on it at the time. Some of them still live and work here, but there is also a whole other group of people who have since been drawn to give expression to that impulse and vision in ways that are appropriate for today. It is that core impulse and our response to it, that creates coherence in our collective – past, present and future – and that gives us identity, purpose and meaning. And we were being asked to focus on it, right at the start of the Game, on something essential in the community’s spiritual DNA.

Towards the end of the Game, three days later, the Well-being and Creativity Area landed, appropriately enough, on a Creativity square, and had us all sing a song based on Goethe’s famous quote about going for your dreams.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it – just begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Personally and collectively we were indeed coming present to our dreams and bringing them forward, and the Game – like life – was responding.

So back to that Synergy square. What was needed from all of us to fulfil our purpose and our planetary role and outreach? What was being called for from each of the Playing Areas?

Planetary Role and Outreach moved to a Miracle square, and now not only were they catalysing movement all round, but they were also opening space for miracle energy to help each Area ground their own contribution to planetary work, and particularly to climate change (the player’s chosen topic), through insights and pain-free setbacks. The cards taken showed us that…

In relation to Leadership, Power and Rank, we need to use our minds more, to address our fear of losing touch with our heart if we use our mind… and to let divine intervention join heart and mind through the influence of spirit. We also need to let go of Resistance and open to God asking us – and other Areas – to serve, with radiance.

To foster Well-Being and Creativity, we need to serve ourselves by connecting with others rather than isolating and separating ourselves. Also to speak up for ourselves and others, particularly for minority viewpoints, in ways that benefit everyone – and not freak out if our suggestions are rejected

We need to recognise the work done by this centre with regard to Ecology and Co-Creation with Nature. A Major Initiation square reminded us that there is something deeply initiatory for the planet about the experiment in co-creation between humanity, nature and spirit that began here 44 years ago. And it called us to a deepening engagement with this work as part of the community’s planetary role, reminding us also to let go of righteousness and to communicate opinions honestly and truthfully, without hurting people or hiding our feelings.

Local Economy and Money were on a Dark Night of the Soul square when the Planetary Role Area landed on the Synergy square. The Player was so inspired by what was being shared that he could not stay in his experience of isolation – a pointer that being aware of and inspired by our planetary role will keep us connected with it and give a context for the local work. The Miracle lifted the pain of the Dark Night and encouraged us to look at where we can strengthen our commitment and exercise our creativity. The Player’s commitment was to take care of his physical needs and wellbeing, to exercise… good directions for the local economy and its contribution to the planetary role.

A world crisis setback – without pain – moved all Areas up a level and gave us the opportunity to reflect that part of our Planetary Role is to engage with situations of crisis in the world with wisdom and maturity, without falling into despair, staying present, facing what’s in front of us – and that can help us as a world community move on to the next level.

These were just some of the learnings and insights in a Game in which the deep interconnection of the different Areas became increasingly apparent. In some ways, the insights were not new, but they take root and live in us in a different way when held and processed in the container of particular situations and our specific lives. We are each a fractal of the whole, and the collective comes to focus in each of us individually; this is where transformation occurs. As the players brought forward the details of their lives in individual stories, the dynamics of their examples reflected something in the collective. And by being witnessed so publicly, the movements and changes found resonance in others and were amplified. As each individual moved, so did the collective. For many of us, the shifting of internal community dynamics was palpable.

In the last hour of the Game, the player for Nature landed on a Setback square. “Black and white thinking means you miss out on the colour in life.” Earlier, in response to a card that asked them to establish clear and healthy boundaries between themselves and others, members of this Area had moved out to merge with other Areas for a round, dissolving themselves to foster oneness and the experience that nature is within us all. Now the player on the Setback had to bring his own, unique, individual pain forward. He struggled at first, wanting to move it out, to generalise it, to address the pain of nature. But as he came present to the specifics of his personal situation and personal pain, a whole new direction opened up – a blessing and honouring of the container of coupledom, of the boundaries that support presence, coherence and creativity in relationship, and a collective blessing of the particular marriage of this player and his wife.

So where boundaries are concerned, it’s not black and white. Healthy boundaries: sometimes it’s important to merge, to recognise ourselves in one another; sometimes it’s appropriate to acknowledge and honour the integrity of difference and uniqueness.

Other insights and directions that were highlighted…

Back to Planetary Role and Outreach and two more observations. Towards the end of the Game they used their will to move to the World Work square, and had us all focus on bringing the qualities of the Angels of Love and Respect into areas of conflict. This too is an important direction and contribution to planetary work, on whatever level conflict occurs, and it may take an act of will to do it, to acknowledge and esteem different sides in a conflict, recognising that we all matter.

Twice this Area landed on the Revelation square, a space that allows for feedback and acknowledgement. As person after person came forward to offer their reflections, a mosaic built up of the different ways we as a community both do and could contribute to outreach and engaging with the world – from the attitudes and care with which we clean the toilets here to creating ecological sewage treatment works in Bolivia, Hong Kong and Russia; from programmes Findhorn people and resource people conduct throughout the world to the meditations in the Findhorn sanctuaries; from the books that have been inspired here to the ways in which we can and do learn from the world. It all matters.

In the end, this was for me a key aspect of the message of the Game. We all matter. We are all profoundly interconnected, each individual life interwoven with other lives, each Area interwoven with other Areas, this community interwoven with the world that holds and nurtures us and with which we engage as participant and partner. Our presence is important. All our presences are important. We are held in a coherence that binds us one to another, that binds us to ourselves, to spirit, to earth. And for all who in many different ways are part of this community, we are held in a coherence that binds us to the sacred core deep at the heart of ourselves and this centre, personally and collectively, calling us into incarnation and expression.

It generally takes two to three years for the patternings highlighted in a Planetary Game to clothe themselves and become more grounded. May we have fun as we venture forward in giving substance to the learnings, shifts and insights that surfaced in our five days together!

Mary Inglis