INTRODUCTION

FINDHORN - THE NAME STILL EVOKES A SENSE OF ADVENTURE into a totally new world of living in community, cooperating with the nature kingdoms and bringing spirit into our daily lives. Many years ago, The Magic of Findhorn, a bestselling book, captured the imagination of the world and caused a multitude of people to visit the community and experience for themselves a new and exciting way of working and living together. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, both the Findhorn Community and the world have changed considerably and Karin Bogliolo, a former long-term community member, returns on a quest to see if the magic is still there. Encouraged by her innovative writer friend, Carly Newfeld, who lived at Findhorn in the early 70's, Karin begins to build a fascinating, fresh picture of the ground-breaking community as it is today.

Karin's quirky, down-to-earth personality and sense of humour enliven her investigations. She talks to present members, engages in their daily lives and challenges, shares their family meals, and recounts their differing viewpoints - all the while re-living her own experiences of Findhorn. Despite the difficulties caused by growth, finances, changing personalities and the departure and death of co-founder Peter Caddy, is there still magic at Findhorn? Do people ever leave - even when they go away?

If you have ever visited the Findhorn Community, whether for a day, a week, a month or for many years, this book will help you remember your experience and give you an insight into where the community is now - in the 21st century. For those of you who haven't yet visited the community, this book may be the one that finally tempts you to make the journey. At the very least it will transport you to a space deep inside yourself where you may just connect with magic.

Love & thunderbolts

INTO THE ROOM WALKS A SLENDER MAN wearing a long, black wool coat and hat, his long, dark wavy locks still windblown and wet from the blizzard outside. The room suddenly falls silent as everyone becomes aware of the intensity of energy that has just entered. He removes his coat, the shoulders still covered with a sprinkling of snow. His red waistcoat and striped trousers testify to an impeccable and creative dress sense. High, fine cheekbones confirm undeniably that here is an artist. The award-winning, accomplished musician and rock star Mike Scott.

Like the passionate words that clothe his music, Mike Scott, the Scottish-born inspirational driving force behind the internationally acclaimed rock/folk band The Waterboys, has a lyrical bearing. This is my first meeting with Mike, although I feel as if I have got to know him through his music. I remember the very last Winter Gathering that I ever focalised in the Universal Hall a number of years ago. This Gathering is a yearly Christmas gift from the Findhorn community to the people of the local area, and I had been producing and presenting it for many years. This particular year we screened a film of Mike singing one of his new songs, "Building A City of Light." I remember the stunned silence in the audience when it was over. Perhaps for the first time some of them realised the immensity of what we were trying to achieve here-Building A City of Light. For me, too, the experience was intense. I could feel Mike's music in my solar plexus, the vibration of the sound and the intensity of the words. And yet over the years I have always missed him when he was in the community-until tonight.

I already know that Mike was born in Edinburgh in 1958, and has also lived in Ireland and New York. He is married to Janette, an ex-member of the Foundation, who happens to be focalising the current Experience Week which I have been following. They now live in London, but also tour all over the world with The Waterboys, whose albums include This is the Sea, Fisherman's Blues and A Rock In The Weary Land. The album Bring 'Em All In was actually recorded in the Universal Hall recording studio.

I also know that Mike is a Findhorn Fellow and has many times given very generously of his time and talent to the community. I am curious how Mike came to be involved here and what his experiences have been. He is sitting in one of the big, comfy armchairs in the Cluny Lounge, beginning to relax after his hazardous drive through the snow and wind. He looks at me expectantly, willing to answer my questions. I take a deep breath. After all the interviews I have held with old and new friends, this one feels very different.

"When did you first hear about Findhorn, Mike?" I begin.

He takes a moment to think, and then in his soft, quiet voice replies, "I remember hearing about the Findhorn Community in the early '80's, reading something about Peter and Eileen. I was immediately impressed. I felt instinctively that these people were authentic, and I sensed a power of love working through them. But I was young at the time, busy with rock and roll, and it didn't occur to me then to come to Findhorn myself."

I am trying to imagine the life of a young rock and roll player; and yet, looking at him now, I see in his clear, watchful eyes that this is no wasted rock star but an intelligent and compassionate man.

"Ten years later, I saw Eileen's video 'Opening Doors Within.' It hit my life like a thunderbolt. Everything Eileen said about gratitude and unconditional love was what I needed to hear. By the end of the video I knew I would come to Findhorn to live."

"So that is when you first came here?" I ask.

"Yes, two months later I visited the community, staying at Minton House for a few days. Someone took me to Sacred Dance in the Universal Hall on my first night, and I had a love for the Hall from the beginning. For those first few days however, I had a lonely experience-I wasn't in a workshop, I didn't have a role, and the people I saw around the community were absorbed in their own business. I could feel the power of the place, but didn't feel part of it.

"Then, just before I left for Inverness Airport, I went to the Friday lunch-time Sanctuary. The theme was "Network of Light," and a woman led the meditation. With my eyes closed, I heard her invoke the linking up of Findhorn with Iona and Glastonbury and the spreading of the spiritual Light around the world. I'd been doing 'light-visualising' to the world in my prayers for years-probably not very effectively-yet here in this magical Findhorn Community, people were doing it for real in their lunch hour!"

I sense what is almost a smile crossing his usually serious face, and quietly wait for him to continue.

"I later described this sanctuary experience in a song as 'shuddering in the power like a seedling in a storm,' and that's exactly what it was like. Wave upon wave of inspiration passed through me. I knew I had come home."

I hear the passion and intensity that the remembrance of this experience has aroused in him.

"How long before you came back?" I ask him.

"Six weeks," he tells me. "I returned for an Experience Week. It was another thunderbolt - or rather a series of thunderbolts. The sharings, the Group Discovery games, the experience of working in the Community, all affected me deeply. During that week, my heart opened. For the first time I knew what those well worn words, 'an open heart,' really mean. I could feel a great living fire inside my chest, centred in my heart, at once familiar, awesome and full of a loving power. It was like all the loves of my life rolled into one. It felt like love was breathing in and out of me through my heart. And it felt absolutely, beautifully right-like how being alive is meant to feel."

His poetic way of telling his story reminds me again that he is an artist with both words and music. He closes his eyes for some moments, recalling the feelings and then speaks again.

"This lasted 8 or 9 days. I wrote a song about the week and sang it during the final sharing. I was surprised and moved to see that the entire group were weeping as I sang it. I'll never forget the atmosphere of love and power in that room. I'd done something with my song I'd never intended. Or rather, 'Someone' had done something with my song - it's called the Experience Week Song-now it is played on CD at the end of each Week. I feel very honoured to have given something back to this workshop that changed my life."

The Experience Week has changed many thousands of lives over the years, and it seems it also happened for Mike. I have heard his song on many occasions, always with shivers going up and down my spine, and know that it reflects the experience of many, many others who have trodden this path.

"I've lost count of the blessings I've received from my connection with the Findhorn Community," he continues. "And they also include the surrounding area with which I've come to be so familiar. Morayshire is a beautiful part of Scotland and Forres is a terrific, no-nonsense town. I love the beauty and neighbourliness of Findhorn Village too, where, regardless of my 'day job' as a rock musician, I've always been welcomed in a normal and undistorted way."

"So how has all this affected your life?" I have the question ready, but almost feel it is unnecessary to ask it now. However, Mike is still willing to continue describing his relationship with the community and the lessons he has learned here.

"The greatest thing I've learned at Findhorn is to turn inside for my answers and life decisions, and in my moment to moment actions. After my Experience Week, I realised I'd been using the principle of 'Guidance' in my music for years-intuitively sensing where to take a melody line or a lyric, for example. I could tell if something in the music was right or not. I just 'knew.' After Findhorn, I started learning to apply this to the other parts of my life. I'm still learning it. I've found that my inner instruction usually comes in the form of intuitive promptings - what I call a 'go feeling,' a kind of unmistakable green light of the gut that has a sense of peace and potency in it."

Janette is sitting at the other end of the room, still talking with those members of her Experience Week group who have managed to stay awake after this energetic and emotional final evening. Her sparkling eyes and smiling face don't show that she, too, probably soon needs to "switch off" from the intensity of it all. Mike follows my glance over to his wife.

"How did you meet Janette, Mike? It was here at Cluny, wasn't it?"

A slow, warm smile lights up his face. I know that Mike is a very private person and hope he will be willing to share some of this love story with me.

"Janette was a Foundation Member living at Cluny when I was a 'Living in Community Guest.' We didn't know each other personally, but she'd led a Sacred Dance evening I'd attended, and I started to like her a whole lot. I felt she might be my life partner and co-worker. I remember wondering if it was all a projection or illusion on my part, so I decided to offer it up to God. I sat down in my little room at Cluny and said inwardly, 'I give all these feelings of love for Janette to you, God.' At that exact moment I heard her talking to someone right outside my door!"

The smile continues as he recalls his surprise. "I figured God gave that one back to me pretty fast so there must be something in it! So I left her a note on the Cluny message board asking to have a chat, and remember a mystified Janette coming into the kitchen next morning to ask if the note was from me."

"Was she surprised, or did she know what you were about to say?" I ask him.

"She had no idea what it was about-in fact she wondered if she'd unwittingly offended this man she didn't know, and that perhaps he wanted to give her some feedback! Anyway, she graciously agreed to have a chat and we went for a drink at the Ramnee Hotel in Forres that evening, and I declared myself. She was completely surprised and told me she hadn't thought of me in that way."

Now it's my turn to smile as I think of the surprise and shock that Janette must have felt. Then Mike tells me the rest of the story.

"But a few days later she stopped me in the Cluny corridor and suggested we meet again. The rest is a tale of love and fabulous magic. I was right - Janette became my wife, best friend and spiritual partner. I've understood so much from her and from being with her. I couldn't do what I do in my musical work or be where I am in myself without her love and influence."

Just a few steps away, still giving and sharing herself with her group, is the beautiful lady in person. I know that Mike, too, has been giving much of himself to this place, so I ask him about it.

"You give a lot of yourself-your time and your talent - to the community. Why do you do this?" As always, he listens carefully and intently to my question, then thinks deeply before he answers.

"I love the Findhorn Community. I see it as a high and great endeavour of the human spirit, a birthing ground for a new way of living, so new that the mainstream world still has no frame of reference for it. I'm committed to the Community. And I'm in love with it!"

I nod my head in agreement. Mike takes another moment to reflect on my question before continuing. "I feel that when the Beatles and other movers and shakers of the Sixties were navigating their way through fame and illusion, Peter, Eileen, Dorothy and the builders of the Findhorn Community were quietly and obscurely living and grounding the New Age ideals that everyone else just talked about. I believe theirs was actually the greatest adventure of those times. And it continues right now. I feel it falls to those of us who share or have been inspired by their vision to carry on building what they began. Anything I can give here, I will."

We are all beginning to feel very tired: Mike, after his long drive up here in the snow; Janette at the end of her week with a group of new guests; and myself too. I realise with a shock that in just a few hours I will be leaving here. This is my last night at Findhorn, and Mike is the last person I am interviewing - I'm sure this is no coincidence. I have just one more question for him.

"Is everything wonderful here, Mike, or do you still have some challenges in this spiritual life you are living?"

"Yes, it is a challenge to remember to turn within and live from my place of peace and potency. That's a minute-to-minute challenge for me. It means to be open and vulnerable when that's what needs to happen, to speak my truth when that needs to happen, and not to retreat into my 'little man' ways; an old habit of mine is to lessen myself by not being all that I can be, by not speaking what I know or feel. And on the other hand, it's also a challenge to be the 'Big Me' without getting carried away by power or momentum. I need to find the balance. I desire to be all that I can be-lightly. To maintain and protect my open heart-especially when I am out of the Community-without closing it down under a defensive wall."

He brushes his long hair out of his eyes and continues slowly and thoughtfully, "Part of my role is to walk between the worlds - the new world of the Findhorn Community and the mainstream world outside-helping direct the energies of each appropriately to the other. And to learn that, in God's eyes, both are one, that there is truly no separation, and to manifest this in action."

The flames in the fireplace have died down to a flicker and the lounge is becoming quiet as the last few people make their way sleepily to their beds. It has been another amazing day, filled with many miraculous moments. I watch Mike and Janette, their hands touching lightly as they leave to go home in the snow.

I call a taxi to take me back to the Park. The driver drops me on the Runway a few paces from my B & B, but before starting to walk across the snowy Field of Dreams I hear the strains of bagpipes coming from the Community Centre. Peering in at the window, I see that there is a Ceilidh - a very typical Scottish celebration of music, poetry and dance. I watch the dancing for a few minutes - the men in their swirling kilts and the ladies dressed in their finest - I think it must be Jonathan Caddy calling the dances as usual. I recognise the familiar tunes of The Gay Gordons, Strip the Willow, Mairi's Wedding and The Piper O'Dundee. This is the community at play.

I leave the energetic dancers and return to my little home in Sunflower. The snow has stopped falling, and the stars lighting my way over the slippery paths seem brighter than ever. Going home tomorrow. Or is that leaving home? Perhaps a bit of both.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Karin Bogliolo and co-writer Carly Newfeld were both pioneers of theNew Age in the early days of the Findhorn Community. Karin, with husband Thierry, now owns and manages Findhorn Press. They live in the South of France and frequently visit the Findhorn Community wherethey still have an office.

Carly Newfeld visited Findhorn for a weekend in August 1970 and stayed for eight years. She has lived in New Mexico, USA for the past 18 years and balances raising two teenagers with
freelance writing, radio production, hosting a popular weekly talk show, and acting as
administrator in a middle school.