(This interview by Jeremy Slocombe and Eve Ward was published in OneEarth Magazine, issue no 12, Winter 1993/4.)

Eileen Caddy, along with her husband Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean, helped found the Findhorn Community nearly 31 years ago by using the principles of attuning to God, receiving guidance, and closely following the guidance she received. Eileen still lives in the Community, produces new books, and occasionally travels to give lectures and to spend time with her 17 grandchildren.

“If we are here really to anchor the Christ energy, then we must be willing to keep changing. This is what I am doing with my life”

It is exactly forty years ago since you first heard the voice inside that guided you. How has your experience of this guidance changed over the past forty years, and how do you experience it today?

It has changed completely. At one time I would write everything down. It used to start with “My child” and then I would get the message and write it down. As time went on and I began to love this voice more, the message would start, “My beloved child.”

Again, as time went on and I resonated more and more with the guidance, one day I heard myself saying, “Thy will be done,” and I suddenly realized that I was separating myself from God and that in fact there was no separation.

When I re-read God Spoke to Me [a book of guidance by Eileen] I realized it says over and over again that there is no separation, but somehow it hadn’t clicked until that moment.

There is no separation between ourselves and God, there is only ‘I am’. I am the guidance. It took me so many years to realize this.

When did you have this realization?

About three or four years ago. It all suddenly changed and I realized that if I accept the God within, then ‘I am’ is the highest source. It has been a process that has changed and then changed again. Change is what my life has been about all along, but this is something that I still need to make clear to people, that there has been this change in my relationship to God. When people ask me if I still listen to the voice, my answer is yes, I still listen to the voice, and we all have that voice inside us. We just need to accept that this voice is inside us and that there are many different ways to receive its guidance-intuitive flashes for example.

How did this realization affect the form of the guidance?

It is now in the first person.

Do you still write it down?

I still do, but not always. I feel that I need to have the messages written down because sometimes I forget. It helps to have it there in black and white.

Are these all personal messages that are for you and do not pertain to the Findhorn Community or to other people?

No-of course the messages involve the Community. But I don’t share these messages because very often people don’t want to listen. It is best not to share them. I feel that perhaps the reason for this is that the Community needs to follow its own course and learn its own lessons. There are no such things as mistakes, only things to be learned. I think we need to learn to keep this idea in our consciousness.

When I see things that I think might be going ‘wrong’ in the Community, that’s when I need to keep telling myself that there are lessons that need to be learned.

So the Community are realizing that they must not turn to you for guidance, and realizing that the guidance is not outside of themselves-in much the same way as your own process of guidance has changed?

Absolutely. And this process is more important than anything else-not to listen to what I have to say but to turn within to hear the voice within. I believe that when we each touch in with the universal mind, then there is unity and oneness. When we as a Community can learn to do that, then we will really be practising attunement. After all, what is attunement?

David Spangler’s definition of attunement is “walking, working, living every moment in the presence of God”. I think that sometimes the idea of attunement can be misused, when, for example, I hear people saying, “We have attuned,” to some answer or other. Sometimes I question whether we have really tapped into that universal mind. If we are not very very careful this can be misused.

This is where cleansing is necessary, so that we are pure, clear channels for what needs to come through. A lot of inner work must be done before the process of attunement can be used, and when we are sure in this process, then we can step out fearlessly with what we have attuned to. Before attunement, it is necessary to do the inner work of prayer and meditation.

An example of how we need to understand the process of attunement better occurred in the sanctuary recently. In a meditation attunement I received very clear guidance about something that needed to happen next, but when I expressed it, there was one person who said they didn’t ‘agree’. That was fine with me-I had only expressed what had come through me. But the result of my being there and sharing my guidance was to add a little heat and stir the pot for that group a little bit. It was an opportunity to let the dross come up to the top so it could be looked at and cleared away.

But it was not a comfortable role for me and I don’t like to be in that position, feeling unpopular. I don’t like it, but I feel it is necessary for me to do that every now and again.

How do you do the work of going beyond your own ego?

About a year ago I was not feeling very well physically, things just seemed to be getting worse and worse, and during that time I went into the darkness inside myself and I just couldn’t get out, even though I was here and surrounded by so many loving people. I received guidance that it would be good to go away so I went to England to visit my sister. I had been there for about ten days when I suddenly woke up one morning and started to write: When something new is coming to birth, it goes into the darkness to germinate.

“All the unnecessary bits of my personality were being pruned-chopped off-so that I could bring forth  an abundance of spiritual fruit”

Then I wrote: When a seed is in its packet it lies dormant. When it is taken out of its packet and put into the ground, in the darkness, that is when it starts to change and grow, eventually to flower. I realized that that was what had been happening to me. I had been taken out of my packet and put into the darkness, but there was nothing to be afraid of. It was all part of a much bigger plan-and I started to relax.

Then as I looked out of my window into the garden I watched some fruit trees being pruned. It dawned on me that I was being pruned. All the unnecessary bits of my personality were being pruned-chopped off-so that I could bring forth an abundance of spiritual fruit. These experiences took the whole weight of that darkness off my shoulders and I realized it was just a necessary process of change.

I think we are afraid of change. I think we are afraid to give up what we think we have. But we have to be willing to change-no matter what. To me, this is the key. I have always to be willing to change, and so when I am faced with personality issues I try to clear them away as quickly as possible.

What was the darkness like?

It was a horrible feeling. I felt I had lost everything, that I was no longer in touch with the divinity within me, with the source. I didn’t know what was happening. I prayed and meditated and did everything I felt I should do but I just could not get in touch with that source.

What is the difference between prayer and meditation?

Prayer is talking to that higher part of myself and saying that I want help.

Meditation is just being still and listening. But when I was in the darkness I couldn’t get any answers to my requests for help until I finally woke up that morning. The seedling had just broken through its brown skin and its roots were beginning to go down and its little tip was beginning to move upwards towards the light. It was such an incredible feeling of release, after feeling that I had lost everything, to realize that it was just part of the process I was going through.

I want to share that experience with everyone because I feel that so many people are going through this process and they are feeling lost. We need to be patient while we are in this darkness and not be afraid. My problem was that I was afraid. When I allowed fear in, there was no room for love.

These periods of darkness come in cycles when a change is needing to happen, when we need to clear another bit of our personality. It helps the process if I can accept my feelings and pain and begin talking about them, instead of letting it all build up and fester. In nature the days and the light naturally get shorter and shorter as we move towards the winter, so there is naturally more darkness sometimes, but then when mid-winter has passed we move towards more light again.

If we are here really to anchor the Christ energy, then we must be willing to keep changing. After all, what is the Christ energy? It is that very powerful loving and transforming energy that is within each one of us. This is what I am doing with my life. This is what we have to realize and accept that the Christ energy is.

I love going to the sanctuary and I have asked myself what it is I am doing when I am there. What I am doing is centring myself. I am balancing myself and stabilizing myself. Then I go out from the sanctuary in a different state from when I came in. It’s much nicer to think of going to sanctuary to get God’s guidance, or visions-and sometimes it is that way and I come home and write it down-but mostly going to sanctuary is about stabilizing a certain consciousness.

So in order to ground this energy you need to keep on making changes in yourself?

Yes. It is not always easy because sometimes there is resistance in me and when there is any resistance everything becomes more difficult. If we can just move with the energy it is so simple. I always say, “Here I am, use me in any way.” I can’t say, “Please use me this way, or that way, or please don’t use me in this way,” because I would be cutting myself off from that energy with my resistance. I don’t want to be cut off. I have always tried to follow my guidance, even if it sometimes seems very strange to me.

Do you still have visions?

Yes, but I don’t ask for them, they just come. When they come, they come, and the thing is not to allow it to lower my consciousness if nothing comes. That’s part of the process.

Both Dorothy Maclean and David Spangler have said in recent times that they no longer need to set aside a particular time of the day to meditate, that it is more a flow that goes through the day, and that if they need guidance it just comes to them. How important do you feel it is to your spiritual practice to set aside a specific time each day?

For me it is very important. It helps with my self-discipline. I get up early every morning as if there was a clock inside me. First I meditate at home, then I go to to the sanctuary. But this is my rhythm and not anyone else’s. It may not go on forever in this way, but at the moment I need this self-discipline. This time is when I centre and then I try to act from this centre for the rest of the day. Maybe David and Dorothy don’t need to do that.

But I also know that when anything crystallizes in me, it is eventually smashed to make room for something new, so I realize that one day I might need to stop getting up early and meditating in this way. I might need to be willing to change-to change my whole routine.

There is nothing wrong with routine. For instance, it was necessary for me to have the routine of receiving guidance for the Community because it served a useful purpose; it was good. But it was also necessary to let go of the routine when the time came to stop spoon-feeding the Community. It was clear that the Community would not stand in its own two feet if I continued to spoon-feed it. Now everyone has the opportunity to go inside and connect with their own inner guidance.

For this same reason I stopped getting guidance for my husband Peter, even though we had worked together for so long. It became clear that it would be holding up his growth and I loved him too much to do that, so I stopped. Then that was the parting of our ways, and it was a very very difficult thing for me to do.

But time and time again I have been asked to follow through on what I have been guided to do, no matter what the cost. If we invoke change, if we invoke the Christ, then it becomes an incredibly powerful energy and we have to accept the consequences. And the consequences are terribly uncomfortable sometimes.

This is my choice. I could say, “No more!” but I still say, “Yes please, I want to change.”

What is your view of this Community’s spiritual maturity since you stopped giving it the guidance you received, and what does the future look like?

I think we are moving in the right direction, although it doesn’t always look like that. Everything that needs to happen will happen. Before we can all attune to what we need to do, we need to continue learning to put God first and this aim is the same for each one of us, everyone in the Community. I have a deep inner knowing that we are right in the middle of this process.

Recent Community meetings have sometimes been uncomfortable because the rough edges of personalities are still being smoothed away and things are coming out to be transmuted-it is not a comfortable stage, as we learn to let our personalities get in the way less and less, but I think the Community is maturing.

Sometimes I used to wonder why I am still here, especially since giving guidance is not needed anymore. I know now it is because I hold in my consciousness the thought that everything is moving as it should. It is important that I continue to hold that thought until it manifests. This is where faith comes in and my faith is very strong.