Michael Davidson recounts the impact of his time at Findhorn upon his career as a master stonemason. Originally contributed for the 60th Anniversary celebrations.

At 22 years of age its fair to say you can be a jack of all trades and master of none.

But in all these experiences, whether it be college or work, it’s useful for the young person to pay attention to what sparks his or her imagination; because often within that experience lie the keys to your career and perhaps true work.

I had a lot of great jobs before coming to Findhorn: I was a roustabout on oil rigs and a packer on the New York-NJ Waterfront and at one time a miner in a zinc mine.

Stone did that for me working in the mines. Hard as the work was, I had a fondness for geology in which I wanted to know more: as stone seemed to have personality and character and spoke to me in a secret language of minerals. Your craft, whatever it is, can do that for you. Let your career choose you.

One night  early in winter I was working as a zinc miner when an incident happened that changed my life; and it took going to Findhorn for it to make sense to me.

We had blown open a seam in our shaft and a small crawl hole appeared at the base of a wall.

Crawl holes are like natural cave openings. Tunnels really. These are rare anomalies in solid rock but they do occur. They are dangerous because we don’t know the stability of them. They can have weak or false floors where you can suddenly fall off into subterranian pools or an abyss from which there is no coming back.

I was 21 and brave and fearless with a lot of Pluto in my chart.

I crawled into the opening the way Ulysses charged forward in the labyrinth at Knossos, and carried on on all fours for about four or five feet with only my helmet lamp to guide me.

Suddenly I entered a room where I was able to stand.  What I saw held me spellbound…

It was like I was back stage and viewing this wall of crystals out in front of me but to the side  of me. There were maybe twenty of them and they were all winking and blinking and using complex geometries with frequencies beyond my experience or scientific comprehension.

Since I was stage right to them I was somewhat obscured.

I just stood there, transfixed to what I was witnessing as I had no idea that minerals could have this separate independent intelligence; and like plants and trees they could communicate in nanospheric frequencies of light or ultrasonic sound that was immeasurable to our 3-D science.

This was a wake up call and such an ‘aha moment’ for me that the world was a lot bigger and more complex than I could ever imagine.

It was  about 30 seconds of being transfixed in this state of  awe, when the crystals seemingly became aware of my presence and began shutting down and going dormant as if to protect and camouflage themselves.

“Dang” I thought. But just then a second phenomenon happened which greatly affected  my future  …that’s when  “a still small voice” from within me said

“Ask permission”

…So I did ; (not verbally but within)

“Is it ok to be here?”

It didn’t take long to have been received because immediately without hesitation they came back on with their work, winking and blinking and sending out into the earth their energetic frequency of communication.

Hearing the men come back to the shaft I made an exit back through the hole and never told anyone of my experience. That’s  until I got to Findhorn.

I never said anything because I felt that I was included and allowed permission to be in there. It was a trust that I wanted to honor. Had I said anything specimen hunters would have looted my find, and all would be for naught.

It wasn’t until I was led to Findhorn that the significance of the experience began to take hold and make sense.

The gardeners were of great help and knew right away what I had experienced. and were already communicating  with the plant kingdom. They encouraged me to more deeply attune to stone as they did plants as there was a gift there for me should I pursue it.

Thus encouraged, my practice of attunement combined with my academic knowledge of geology  triggered a deeper  passion for stone and  spirit stones (Like standing stones).

In this practice of attunement we begin using  “soft eyes “ in  our use of the intuitive mirror how to perceive  the core energetic of stone (and minerals)  the way a healer or a therapist uses the same construct as they “listen with their eyes” to perceive their client’s energy in patterns that create a road map for opportunities for healing and repair.

Energy wants to flow; and we want to help it.

Over time I became proficient in reading stone, and by the time I returned to New York I was eventually sought after as a historic stonemason and conservator which put me into position for some big restoration projects that were just taking off.

New York is all stone ; and all of it was in need of repair.

I created a consultancy that did evaluations; I made and wrote recommendations with methods of repair, then often – depending on the size of the project – performed the work.

This was invaluable to engineers and architects and it took me on a career in which I traveled world wide.

“Its all energy,” Einstein said in his apology to the church who wanted him to prove the scientific existence of God. “I’m sorry,” he said “it’s not religion or philosophy. It’s energy (prana chi).”

So it is with stone. We listen with soft eyes.

A  failure or a crack  in the stone for instance sometimes will show itself like a pain in the body; and when we listen to it with soft eyes will often discover its origins are elsewhere  than where it shows itself.

When the Hall was finally built my Findhorn experience was complete, at least in the physical.

I want to honor Findhorn for my time there. People often ask what was my favorite big stone job was: Carnegie Hall? Statue of Liberty?  I say my favorite job was always the one in which I had the best crew and the best people  to work for.

In my working stone at Findhorn  everyone in the community was so supportive of everyone else. There was no hierarchy, no real bosses in the traditional sense. We all had areas of responsibility and we all had  so much fun in  being there plus the number of  characters  living and working there  was like living in a  Marx Bros movie.

We were literally all Walk Ins; just accidental tourists who made a wrong turn  and walked in (like I did) looking for a Spar Shop. We were, to put it bluntly, vagabond carpenters and college-age  stonemasons; jacks of all trades and masters of none.

We had no idea where we were, really; every day was an adventure. It was like living in this cosmic Fawlty Towers located here  at this remote spiritual outpost out on the edge of the cosmic universe…

We lived in thrift clothing. There was no goggle box, no wifi, no cell phone or internet. No stars that rated your accommodation, no mint on the pillow. We were poets and troubadour castaways who Peter routinely and intuitively organised for the Master Plan of what he and Eileen and Dorothy envisioned as a ‘seed incubator for global planetary awareness’.

Seeds are esoterically the empowerment of potential. They have incredible power and are a storehouse of energy. All that was needed was the sunlight and the water and the care; and that is what the Findhorn community offered us in our tenure there. No one in those days ever thought of living and making our careers there . It wasn’t set up that way .

What we were building, while important, was the seed incubator. What the community was building was really being built on the etheric; this is what our seed consciousness was building .

In 1976 there was one Findhorn Garden; by 1990  there were thousands inspired by Findhorn’s consciousness.  This consciousness was the true Findhorn work.

The lesson for many of us was it didn’t matter where you lived as long as you practiced beauty and care for the nature of  life around you.

When the Hall was complete, I went back to New York as the jobs for stonemasons and people who knew restoration were just taking off in a billion dollar preservation industry.

I was lucky as I was thrown in with a couple of master masons who were close to retirement. They taught me the finer parts of the craft in making architectural details and so on.

This led me to become the project manager over some big restoration jobs like Carnegie Hall and the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Cathedral of St John the Divine where I reconnected with many Findhorn luminaries like William Erwin Thompson, Paul Winter and dozens of former members who were passing though New York and would stay at my apartment.

My time at the Cathedral was blessed because it was true Gothic stone work: we fabricated all of our material right on site and I could walk to work; I also attended chemistry and engineering classes across the street at Columbia to learn about cements and mortars and the steel used in buildings. This was invaluable.

All this by the mid 80’s when I was chosen to head up restoration teams to restore our embassies in the communist bloc countries and in Greece. I spent several more years overseas living and working in Europe (I kept apartments in Warsaw and Athens).

By the 90’s, (less than ten years after Findhorn) I was hired by a Paris-based international restoration firm to head up teams in masonry restoration both in the United States and in Europe.

Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Paris were all cities I became familiar with.

By that time my work besides stone work included contract negotiations with unions; detailed evaluations and tests that led to scopes of work and other necessary and valuable contract documents.

Whatever career chooses you, you go with the flow – especially when one door opens to another and then another, because no matter what the mind thinks, there are  many opportunities at play.

I so honor my time there at Findhorn and the many lifelong friends who made our time there so wonderful. Happy 60th birthday Findhorn!

Michael Davidson