Role of the Findhorn Foundation in consciousness evolution, soul infusion and the unfodling of the love petals of the soul
(this post is a bit long - but hey - so is the souls path)
My journey with the Findhorn Foundation (FF), a spiritual, ecological and holistic centre in Northern Scotland started some 12 years ago. The past 7 years I lived there and served this centre.
Colourful greeting from Findhorn, made by Yasko Takahashi
As the heading says I think the Findhorn Foundation and its community
is really here to help unfold and support the opening of the human heart chakra. It is good to have an idea what the greater purpose of Findhorn in
the bigger scheme of consciousness evolution might be, therefore I have expanded
a little my own inquiry. This is both based on my own experience of how my own heart
and soul have remembered and opened as well as my study in esoteric philosophy.
These teachings are esoteric (hidden) to a large extent because they teach about the
subtle, unseen realities behind all forms and one seldom pays attention to this invisible world
until the heart has started its delicate unfolding.
Many of us may agree that creation,
source, existence itself thrives on diversity and wants to explore and express
itself through life in a multitude of life-forms including the human life-form.
We can certainly see this principle at work at Findhorn, in only 53 years this community has achieved a lot and there does not seem to be an end to the
expressive creativity that flourishes here – HURRAY!
“Nature itself holds the clue to the Divine. In its myriad forms the
great potentiality of being is poured out, streaming from the womb of
potentiality, exploding into act. A kind of meta-physical combustion seems to
be working in the fabric of things, in a surge of incipient energy breaking out
of its bounds of nuclear forms and disappearing into the Beyond” Bill
Everson/poet
Usually people seek out Findhorn, often
guided by their soul, when they have somehow exhausted their ambition and
ego-centred expression or are just about to do this even though they don’t quite know it yet and are waking up to the
fact that there is more to life. Alternatively they are eco-aware young or
older people who have come to learn about sustainable, holistic living,
perma-culture and eco-design. Often in the course of their time within the field of Finhorn they
find the spiritual aspect, if they did not have that before and they find the
path to the heart. We should not exhaust our energy in conversations about what
was the hen and what was the egg – what came first, spirituality or eco. It doesn’t really
matter, what is important is that the heart chakra opens – either route – Findhorn would have done its job.
Way back, in early 70ties, it was decided that Findhorn should become a “rainbow centre”, welcoming all.
This set the tone, vibration and field of what spirit, i.e. the inner side of
life, wanted to unfold through this intentional community. Findhorn Foundation did not become the exclusive initiatory
mystery school but rather an inclusive and expansive Aquarian demonstration
centre of unfolding consciousness and through this serving the world. Findhorn has
also been described as a centre where the soul incarnates more fully into the
personality and this is directly related to the opening of the heart chakra.
When the human heart opens it IS the bridge to the spiritual realms and allows the creativity of soul-expression
through – a soul-expression which holds both the abundance and the potentiality
Bill Everson writes so beautifully about. It is naturally holistic, universal, thinks
ecologically and opens to the understanding of interdependence and the rights
of all life-forms, both seen and unseen to live in harmony on this planet. What
also tends to happen is the development of some degree of group-consciousness. This
is all in the nature of the soul.
The human heart is sealed and closed protecting
the weary traveller, i.e. the soul until a time when there is readiness, a
fertile ground to allow its tender opening. As a place and energy field Findhorn
and community represent a fertile ground where a wonderfully safe
space is created for this unfolding to happen. In any individual life, in any soul journey, this is
a momentous moment because possibly for the first time the “downward gazing soul”
has caught the attention of the personality in incarnation. Or even if it has
happened before in a previous lives, each life has to come to a point of
remembering as we tend to drop down into amnesia when we incarnate.
The love people sense here, the
acceptance they experience paves the way to a more soul-full life, and soul-full
lives expresses themselves in diversity, creativity, expansiveness, joy and abundance.
An open heart enables source to come through as source expressing itself, its
unique contribution through each and every one of us in this dimensional realm.
We all have a unique divine blueprint, a gift to the world. May Findhorn therefore continue
and own even more this process of opening the human hearts so that
all expressions spread out like the seeds from a sunflower – which was I
believe one of Eileen Caddy's guidance (Eileen was one of the founders of this centre of Love & Light). This to me is our world work.
Eileen Caddy, Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean with David Spangler (left)
What does esoteric philosophy teach about how the human heart opens –
what are some of the stages?
Naturally this is a process that spans
over many incarnations. Opening of the human heart is a long process of a soul
unfolding according to the esoteric philosophy traditions. In each life we have
to remember were we left of before and what actually constitutes an expansion
for us and life will lead us to this.
I’ll try and present this complex
unfolding (you are a whole Universe so how could it be simple) to you in a simplified
nut-shell version so that my point of why I think Findhorn is especially geared up
to support this process becomes clearer and how Findhorn contribute to the bigger
picture of our ONE HUMANITY.
Why this is relevant in our current
time and why the Findhorn impulse came through when it did in the 60ties is
also part of the picture. What got seeded in the 60ties is meant to flower now. In our process of moving from the Piscean age to the Aquarian age
(a 150 year transition in itself) a new collective consciousness is being
birthed. We see this all over the world in the grass-root movements and a tremendous
spiritual awakening taking place. We move from the Kali Yoga (age of darkness)
to the Satya Yuga (age of light) and the opening of the human heart is part of
this process and represents a movement into greater coherency with the evolutionary process.
Many of us wanted to be here on earth at this time as it represents a giant opportunity
for the soul to evolve. One result of the work at Findhorn is the tens of thousands of people around the world who have been touched by the impulse here and are doing their contribution towards a more sustainable, holistic life-style. Findhorn has turned out to be a great incubator of new ideas, from Eco-Village Network, Gaia Education and recently the New Story Movement just to mention a few.
The Soul is often referred to as a
Lotus; this is just to give it a picture we can relate to. What the different
stages of the Soul Lotus really refer to are different energy streams that
expand our consciousness through numerous life times. The soul is said to have
9 major petals/energy streams and the unfolding is not a linear process but one
of synthesizing and attuning to different levels of consciousness, yet it also
follows a certain sequence. These 9 soul petals are divided into three
Knowledge Petals, three Love Petals and three Sacrifice Petals. Here sacrifice
refers to the original meaning of the word which is “to make holy”. Each of
these categories are divide into Knowledge/Knowledge – Knowledge/Love and
Knowledge/Sacrifice and Love/Knowledge – Love/Love and Love/Sacrifice and finally
in the last tier into Sacrifice/Knowledge – Sacrifice/Love and
Sacrifice/Sacrifice. When we come to this last stage we have our final
enlightenment immersion into non-dual Oneness. Remembering of that which we
truly are and along the way we would have had minor enlightenment experiences
and peak experiences before, but at the last stage we merge permanently into
Oneness, mount the cardinal cross in the heavens and resurrect (to use
Christian terminology). The petals are related to the elements, i.e. first we
deal with EARTH in the Knowledge Petals, then WATER in the Love Petals and
lastly FIRE in the Sacrifice Petals, the element of AIR is the carrier of all.
Some characteristics of the Petals
I will not start at the beginning but
from the last Knowledge Petal, i.e. Knowledge/Sacrifice (3) to give you a sense
of the flow.
During the later stages of the
Knowledge Petal (P3) individual uniqueness is still not present, it is
suppressed and we are the uniform, blend with the whole, don’t stand up for
ourselves, we conform. We make best of our circumstances and there a lot of –
“oh, let’s not think, or talk about that” – lots of unspoken taboos. Because
the last petal in this first tier is a Sacrifice petal we “make” our emotions
behave to do our job and we may wreck our backs working 14 hour days. You may
say “I must do this even if it kills me”. It’s the stage of modern slavery,
enforced servitude. Natural joy has disappeared. Here we had in the recent past
the Industrial Revolution and current day Globalisation which drives work to
where low paid work forces are available. These can be nice good people, constructive
members of society. But they are often unhappy and wonder at the end of their
lives was it worth it. We still have the whole military and most of the economic
spheres here and we rely very strongly on our lower mind, but we are not the
observer of the mind and we are definitely not very much in touch with our
emotions. In the chakras there is a focus in the solar plexus centre, sacral
centre and base. All knowledge petals are related to the element EARTH.
LOVE
The Love Petals (P4), related to the
WATER element, start to unfold when we have exhausted the previous stage and
seek conscious balancing of pairs of opposites and respond to the Law of
Attraction and Repulsion. In the first Love/Knowledge stage psychology begins,
we start sensing something higher, something immanent and we start to
comprehend causes. We basically move from the Hall of Ignorance to the Hall of
Learning. The inner observer starts to emerge and we seek harmony between the
opposites, recognizing that both are needed and we seek reconciliation.
Stillness enters and we start to look within. This is the phase were great work
of healing takes place on the feeling level, feeling the pain, healing it by
feeling it. A lot of people visit therapists when this petal has started to
activate. This is higher knowledge applied through love, yet it is not yet soul
love. Introversion becomes possible. We are paying attention to our feelings
and we give attention to our subtle bodies for the first time. A lot of mending
of the incongruence’s between a person’s inner self and a person’s outer self
takes place and it brings about authenticity.
The “downward gazing” soul notices us
for the first time and starts to pay attention to the call that comes from the personality, even
though only fleetingly. We are beginning to discriminate between mind and
emotion, a lot of self-examination, memory and recalling patterns. All planes
are included: physical, astral/emotional and mental. The Higher Self is in the
process of being born to consciousness. This is the world of the personality as
a whole and its relation to itself as an integrating something to the soul
(higher source within). We are verging towards the world of meaning and
starting to understand cause and effect. This is the stage of becoming
distinct, of individuation and conscious self-betterment. We want to improve
life and the eyes begin to focus upon self....about being our own star....The
Ageless Wisdoms call these Lotuses of Integration, Lotuses of Progression,
Lotuses of Ingathering, Lotuses of Harmonization, Lotuses of Fusion, Lotuses of
Progressive Centralization. We recognize the rights of others and we do not do
physical damage to others. Here we have the average really good man/woman who
shows some measure of love.
In our chakra system we integrate the
lower three chakras and the opening of the heart begins, the throat centre also
starts to express itself as it is the clearing house of the integrating
personality, yet the solar plexus still dominates, it is the furnace of
feelings and this is a very watery (emotional) tier. There is a tiny bit of activity in the
head centre and some initial activity in the Ajna centre. We are self-guiding,
self-reflecting and self-directing and aspiration has started. The light is
seen through the waters and we start to move from pure materialism to
well-being and change from outer values to inner values. Some altruism may come
in and we become somewhat sensitive to the group. We are getting our act
together and we start to question more. We can “taste” the inner Sun and are
looking towards the light but we are still in the separate prison of our own
house. Integration is really about withdrawing your projections, but we are often unconscious of the triggers causing our projections.
The next petal to open is the
Love/Love (P5) which comes about through the process of gradually transmuting
the love of the subjective nature or of the Self within turning our attention
to the love of the REAL, higher intelligence LOVE. We are still in the watery realms therefore
fire by friction, which started in the previous petal, continues. Solar Fire is
first realized in this petal as we aspire more consciously towards the soul. We
start meditating and want consciously to build the connection and relationship
(anthaskarana or Rainbow Bridge) to the soul. We strive to unite mind and heart
and we will eventually pass the point of no return. The real task here is to
achieve soul contact and our mental body starts to be affected by the souls
down flow, especially in the later part of this petal. The soul is felt as a
higher power and we reorient ourselves. We die to being content with expressing
merely as a dominant personality. We are still in the Hall of Learning but we
have intimations of what it might be like in the Hall of Wisdom. The soul
shines in the Hall of Wisdom and it begins here under the Sun in the fifth
petal, often with the influence of Leo strong in our chart. We actually touch a
Higher Power. We enter the world of meaning, interpreting patterns and the
place of anything within the wholeness. The path of pure ambition has shown its
insufficiency and we are getting off the centre of our own stage. Here the path
of aspiration becomes even stronger. When this tier has started to open we
actually try to do something for the evolution and helping others. This is the
stage of creative expression of mentality and merging of lower mind and higher
mind, the heart continues to open. This fifth petal already has a good portion
of light and shines its brilliance in dark places and this light is not kept
under the bushel, these people are often seen. In the teachings they are called
the Points of Fiery Excellence, are highly magnetic, evolved, creative and
altruistic world aspirants, possibly writers, artists, thinkers etc. Some mysticism comes in and we leave the
lesser Sun to move towards the Real Sun (i.e. the Spiritual Sun). Downfall here
can be pride, arrogance and fame which comes too early – the ego falls and the
heart emerges powerfully. Later some humility arises from humiliation. There is
a strong sense of purpose and we lift our energies from the solar plexus to the
heart consciously. The transmutation of our emotional nature really starts
here. The soul is now the object of our attention. This is the first solar
(Sun) petal, the personality becomes radiant. This petal has two stages: “I am That”
and “I am That, the Soul”. We are still selfish; but it has turned to
fulfilling our own soul purpose. Here the esoteric philosophy point out that a
little knowledge can be a dangerous thing as there is risk of aggrandizement
and delusion.
Our throat centre represents the
personality and the heart centre the soul. The head centres are coming into
effect and we move slowly from self-love, to soul-love towards group love. Real
group consciousness without asking much in return for the separate self does
not start until the 7th petal. In this 5th petal
imagination develops; emotional idealism and discrimination as well as
spiritual discernment. There is revelation of beauty and of inner quality, a
place to reveal and download your soul talent; we contact our own genius – our
Higher Self. Once the personality is satiated you can make progress. This is a
very rich petal where many things are against each other and merge with each
other; intellectual, artistic and heart person.
We are turning from ambition to aspiration and getting the ideal of
service. We may have the “born again” experience and we are at the midway point
of the BRIDGE, i.e. heart. It is a very important petal with a lot of
decisiveness and reorientation. Here we have the first determined orientation
toward the inner God. This is the beginning of humility; foundation of
compassion later. Often we have to recapitulate some of the previous petals.
In the Love/Sacrifice (P6) petal a
human being tries to consciously give up his/her own desires for the sake of
his/her group. The motivation is still somewhat blind and still coloured by the
desire for a return of that which is given and love from those he/she seeks to
serve, but it is of much higher order than the blind sacrifice (P3) to which a
man/woman is driven by circumstances in the earlier unfoldment. Here the
central ring of the soul lotus comes into full unfoldment and the heart centre
of the monad (pure spirit) is first seen. In this philosophy the soul itself is
seen as an intermediary between spirit and matter. The mutable cross in
astrology ends here and we step onto the fixed cross. The person has integrated
his/her emotional nature, mind and heart have come together, but is still not
fully and completely inspired by soul light, yet continuing to receive more of
the energy of the soul.
We are very hard on ourselves in this
petal; critique our personality expression as we try to be the true server. It
is an important decision point, often ruled by Libra. We have by now become good
at meditation, reaching and communing with the soul on a regular basis and when
we are willing to be tested we can say we are truly on the Path. We prepare for
the entrance to the Hall of Wisdom. We are still in the World of Meaning were
we learn to know the causes behind effects and the place of any function in the
larger context. We arrive at spiritual discernment when we take the first
Initiation (Birth of the Christ Light or Buddha Nature in the Human Heart) at
the lowest level of the causal body and this can really only happen when we
have started to unfold the Sacrifice tier. Here we undertake a lot of spiritual
reading, studying all things as symbols which reveal spiritual causes. There is
more conscious testing brought about by Pluto (brings “stuff” up) and Vulcan
(the blacksmith of the heavens who hammers your aura until it is clean) – they
will test you! Basically bad stuff comes up and good stuff comes down. This is
the stage called “entering the cave” – the Hermit in Tarot – the cave is the
cave of Initiation, which means a huge expansion of consciousness, a quantum
leap.
Now we want to serve rather than
require; we are tired of the many forms of the personality and are looking more
and more toward the soul’s own form. We enter the playground of the higher
mind, i.e. we want to know about the plane on which the soul is found. We are
trying to give up our own desires for the sake of the group we serve, but are
still expecting rewards. These Lotuses are called Radiant Lotuses, Lotuses of
Purification, Lotuses of Adjustment, Lotuses of Reflection, Lotuses of
Discrimination and Lotuses in the Cave. We are spiritually pregnant and we make
corrections and adjustments, discriminating between soul and personality. We go
silent and talk less as we are yearning for the Kingdom of God. (Much later we
fly out of the cave with our wings open at the fourth Initiation, Petal 9).
Here we have the budding mystic, the sensitive struggling and longing for
illumination of the soul. A mystic proceeds on the heart line, whereas an
occultist proceeds on the wisdom line, but there is no real wisdom without
heart so an occultist who is able to work consciously with energies and forces
is not really allowed to do so until the heart is open. There is the intensity
of feeling in the presence of God – of the numinous. This is the stage of
adaptation, discipline, training, correcting, house-cleaning, discarding
rubbish and attempting to respond to group need. There is something more
important than the “I am” – and we do it consciously.
Some of the head centres have opened
and the synthesising Ajna centre is important as we continue to integrate.
There is a vision of the future and a guiding direction. When the portal of
initiation opens the seven head centres must awaken because we are preparing
for the seventh petal and the first Initiation.
Mostly we have normal use of the lower centres, heart, throat, Ajna
opening, four centres in the head open and the Alta Major centre at the back of
our head starts to open. At the first Initiation we have 25 % control, i.e. 25
% of our atoms in our body carry a higher light. We have become more objective
about ourselves. We are still motivated by desire but now it is the desire for
the return. There may be a phase of self-criticism, a feeling of unworthiness
before the Higher Power. The risk here is to lose touch with the lower centres
and therefore lose touch with Earth; denial of the lower can enter - a denial
really of the Divine Mother as we yearn to ascend. This is a big service petal
and we are working for others, even if little selfish at times. But as we will
later learn, we cannot ascend to the Father without taking the Mother with us,
only thus can the great marriage of the feminine and masculine aspects of
ourselves take place. This sacred marriage happens in the heart.
We ask “What is my motive?” We have
learned to control our astral nature and are intelligently participating in
world affairs. It is a crisis of gestation. Before every Initiation there is a
crisis of the Burning Ground. This means that the soul energy burns the dross
in our field of numerous incarnations. Remember that this field is an
interpenetrating auric field which touches us deep all the way to our
physicality. We consist of both elemental and deva substance. When the soul
purifies us, eventually all elemental essence in the soul field which has been
distorted during previous lives comes to be purified in the dark womb of the
feminine (our body, our Earth). This continues with greater intensity in the
Sacrifice Petals until our liberation.
Love/Sacrifice is about everyday
life, everyday life becomes divine, beginning to transform
everyday life into something more numinous.... God is here too we realize.
There is an alignment with the soul in everyday life, a very practical approach
to divinity. There are many pains as it is difficult to acquire what you
desire, i.e. soul-infusion and purification. Here we
discriminate between need and want and through detachment wisdom grows.
Lots of people in religious/spiritual
orders/centres and in monasteries are here, making pilgrimages, going far to
find the soul in the outer world – the guru/ashram – yet the soul is not the
same as the outer teacher. We become more introverted with some self-centredness possible, we may say: “I am going to serve the world but it is
hard to manifest”. We are giving but still wanting something in return. Not
until the Fourth Initiation do we get to a point where we do not want anything
in return. We are still nailed to the Fixed Cross and some demonstration is
needed, body is more or less under control and heart is opening more. We have
to kneel to take the first Initiation, possible loss of material things
(Capricorn – the mountain of Initiation).
In the three following Sacrifice
petals, which represent the Initiatory Path and where the element FIRE with its
electric fire dominates the First Initiation can be confirmed. Maybe in another
text I will write about them, but for now I wanted to concentrate on the Love
Petals and the HEART.
As we see the unfolding of the heart
is a long, long process and this is, I believe, what Findhorn is here to serve,
enhance and enable. How these awakened hearts express their unique gifts in the
world is the contribution.
PS! Where the esoteric philosophy and
the non-dual approach, which is so popular today, differ is important to
understand. The non-dual says that you are already what you are seeking, i.e.
the soul, therefore you are perfect. Esoteric philosophy agrees but recognizes
that the perfect soul, or divine blueprint, cannot fully express itself through
the personality and is in itself evolving. Perfect in its potentiality, but
imperfect in its capacity to express itself successfully through the
personality in order to serve and make an uplifting contribution. Without
understanding, the non-dual approach can become a trap or a diversion, a
potential avoidance of the actual work to be undertaken, i.e. clearing up our
portion of the collective unconscious and bringing in more love and light. This
is honouring the “job description” of every awakened soul.
