Findhorn is a mystery school -- what the heck does that mean?

It means that I wanted to speak with Dorothy Maclean and she skated past me as I was finishing lunch.  “You can go!” said my table companions whom I had just told I wanted to meet her.  “We won’t be offended.”  This 89-yr-old moves fast, with the help of two walking canes, so I had a little trouble arriving in the neighborhood, but when I asked permission to approach, she said “sure” -- if I had questions.

My Gurdjieff teacher (years ago) also would not talk unless you asked him a question.  Dorothy Maclean said she’d been living in Seattle for twenty years.  (She arrived back just a few months ago and the community is finding ways to meet her needs, both now and in the future.)  I won’t trouble you with the usual descriptions of penetrating gaze and keen intellect -- that’s actually patronizing when you think about it, but what does stand out for me was an air of kindness -- and authority.

This is a woman who has answers and no hesitation in giving them -- if you ask, of course.  Dunno what I asked, but the answer was love.  As she said, the great religious leaders all agree on this.  She stopped every few hundred yards for a brief rest and these punctuated our discussion.  At the third one I told her I would not go on, to return her privacy to her, with my thanks.  “I’ll go on, then” she said -- not a rejection, not an invitation.  Must be a bit wearing to be a living legend.  A community of five hundred or more where there was a sandbank when you first arrived years ago.

“All the great religious leaders agree; the answer is love.  The principles I used (commune with plant devas) are the same now but we haven’t begun to use them and we must.  It is a time of crisis.  People think of money instead, what they can get instead of giving.”

I personally don’t agree about the money thing -- money is energy and is to be respected and used for good.  If you do not respect and tend to money, you will find that you have lost all power over whatever it is you built while you were ignoring money, as happened to Ben and Jerry and to Jim Rouse at Columbia.  Money is also a healing and wonderful discipline to keep the folks on the mountain connected to the inhabited lands.  It is instructive when you think you’ve done beneficial work to ask whether anyone will pay you for it -- if the answer is no, you need to check the quality of the work.  Not a problem for Findhorn; the quality is excellent.  There is a reasonable price and lots of people pay it.

You’re getting a lot of me and not so much Dorothy here. 

I said to her that it’s easier for me to love plants and animals than people.  “That’s because you aren’t seeing the people as created in God’s image.  Everything is created by God but we have free will and that gives us the ability to create in our own right -- to be co-creators with God.  We are not using this ability, and we must.”