How Findhorn Eco-Village Serves Planet with Whole-Hearted Principles, Essence & Guidelines

In 2017’s newsletter with a Planet focus, I explored 2 prototypes for an Integral City – one was Durant, Oklahoma, and the other Findhorn Eco-Village, Scotland. A year later I find myself and Integral City endeavours relocated to Findhorn Eco-Village.

Only a month has passed since I turned up at Findhorn with bag and baggage to taste the life of an eco-house in a co-housing cluster, called East Whins. I have remarked (in blogs – see links below) on the shifts of my daily routines from the Canadian city where I lived for 25 years to the eco-village life where technologies have been adapted for sustainability (e.g. composting on a village-scale), relationships have been leveraged through shared ownership (e.g. co-housing laundry facilities) and individual intentions are embraced with collective we-space (e.g. in the daily spiritual rituals at the nature and meditation sanctuaries).

One of the most noticeable benefits to planning and acting as Integral City is that the experience of wholeness is built into the fabric of this community. With Integral City’s calling to serve the planet through the exploration of the Human Hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ, it brings a renewal of energy every day to sing, eat, walk and talk with a large group of people who share these fundamental values.

Findhorn describes its whole community purpose this way:

Co-Creating a Thriving and Loving World …

As a conscious community, we strive to demonstrate a practical spirituality in harmony with nature, and play our part to positively transform humanity and the earth.

 Living under this banner gives me and Integral City fundamental encouragement that our purpose (to amplify and align evolutionary intelligences for the Human Hive as Gaia’s Reflective Organ) resonates with the community that holds sacred the body, mind and spirit every day. With our Integral City ethos of the Master Code: to care for Self, Others, Place and Planet, we feel welcomed to be part of a community who holds “a positive vision for humanity and the Earth, a commitment to deep and practical spirituality and to true ecology – caring for each other and caring for our planet.”

Because Integral City itself is a pioneer in re-shaping human habitats, it is a comfort and blessing to be in a community that recognizes, “We are a living, dynamic, practical experiment, building and seeking to demonstrate in physical form what is possible by working together as an intentional Community.”

Just as Integral City’s Map 5 reveals the power of the evolutionary and involutionary flow as the Source and Re-Source of the city, we are inspired by Findhornian’s embrace of Beauty, Goodness and Truth as a simple way of life. They avow, “We seek to create and hold spaces that are caring for the soul – places of beauty where we learn and practice the healing power of love. We seek to be visionary, vital, vibrant and viable on this Earth.”

Findhorn has been guided by 3 guiding Principles for living and working in community:

1. Deep Inner Listening
2. Work is Love in Action
3. Co-Creation with Nature.

In many ways these principles reflect the I, We, It/Its contributions of the integral model, which along with how Findhorn describes its Essence unpacks how to live in Beauty, Goodness and Truth. The Essence of Findhorn includes:

• We live in clarity and integrity, and seek nothing less than truth.
• We live in openness with deep listening, and seek nothing less than communion.
• We live in gratitude and open-heartedness, and seek nothing less than love.
• We live in courage and willingness, and seek nothing less that our soul’s path.
• We live in cooperation and shared vision, and seek nothing less than alignment with Spirit.
• We live in awareness and responsibility, and seek nothing less than peace.
• We live in acceptance and surrender, and seek nothing less than freedom.

Findhornians use Guidelines to integrate their Principles and Essence into personal practice. Although each Guideline is expressed in I language, from an Integral City perspective we can see the tetra-arising along with the I, of We, It and Its as well. These perspectives are alive and might be rearranged to reflect the Guidelines in an All Quadrants embrace as shown in the graphic below.

Taken together the Purpose, Principles, Essence and Guidelines have become a Common Ground by which Findhorn aspires to live in service to the planet. As each day passes, time spent in the Findhorn eco-park community, learning, walking, talking and exploring the systems and quality of life here affirms the call to move Integral City. Here is a home where Place Caring and Place Making are living, dynamic and ever-evolving. This seems a home where the evolutionary impulse is animating Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

We see around us the Principles in action reflecting Eileen Caddy’s words:

“As you become aware of that oneness, Everything in your life falls into place In true perfection.” (1)

(1) Caddy, E., (1977). The Living Word, Findhorn Press, Findhorn Park, Scotland.