The Many Ways of Practising Inner Listening
Our community’s founders Peter and Eileen Caddy and their friend Dorothy Maclean had their own personal ways of connecting to their source of inner wisdom or – how Eileen would call it – the still, small voice within. Dorothy and Eileen were seeking spiritual guidance in the stillness of meditation, whereas Peter got inner promptings at any time, day or night, sometimes even in the middle of a meeting, or whilst having a cup of tea.
If you would like to hear about their personal experiences on how they received guidance for the first time and how challenging it was for them to learn to follow this guidance, please listen to these short audio recordings from our archives …
Eileen Caddy hearing an inner voice
“And then I heard the voice and the voice said ...
‘Be still and know that I am God.’
You know when you are going through a really difficult time in your life and you start to hear a voice – well that just about finished me. I thought: ‘My goodness, I am going round the bend and having a nervous breakdown. What in the world is happening?”
Listen to how Eileen started hearing an inner voice for the first time and how she kept connecting to Spirit when the going got tough …
Dorothy Maclean connecting to nature spirits
“I was to realise that everything behind nature had an ensouling intelligence, whether it was a plant or a cloud or a vegetable, and my job was to attune to and harmonise with that intelligence.
Well, the minute I got this in my meditation I argued, because I didn’t think that I could do it. How could I attune to something that I didn’t know existed?”
Listen to how Dorothy attuned for the first time to the beings she called ‘Devas’ – Nature Spirits who hold the plan and pattern for everything in nature…
Peter Caddy receiving and acting upon inner promptings
““ I had to believe it to learn to always act immediately on that inner prompting. And I never forgot that.””
Listen to Peter’s fantastic stories of how unbelievable things fell into place for him when he learned to always act immediately on his inner promptings …
Following inner guidance
Even though our community’s founders received guidance in different ways, the main thing Eileen, Dorothy and Peter had in common is that – after initial challenges – they learned to always act upon their guidance, even when it didn’t seem to make sense to the mind at all. For example, following the guidance Eileen received, they built a big kitchen and community centre and bought expensive chairs for the sanctuary, at a time when the small, spiritual community that grew around them hardly had any members and not much money.
In hindsight all decisions they made based on their guidance turned out to have been the right decisions. The community grew so large that the size of the kitchen and community centre even seemed small at times (over the years extensions even had to be added on) and the beautiful golden chairs they purchased were of such good quality that they allowed thousands of community members and guests to sit comfortably in the main sanctuary for decades.
Dorothy Maclean, Eileen Caddy and Peter Caddy sitting outside the Original Caravan in the 1960s
Once Peter, Eileen and Dorothy learned to always act upon their inner guidance, in hindsight even the most challenging situations seemed to turn out as a success. They led their whole lives according to their inner knowing and all decisions, big or small, were made in alignment with Spirit – no matter if it was managing Cluny Hill Hotel, growing vegetables on sandy soil or establishing a large spiritual community in the North of Scotland …
What does this mean for us?
Everybody can receive spiritual guidance
Sanctuary on Erraid
Of course our co-founders are not the only people who were able to receive spiritual guidance. Some would say we all do, just most of us notice it in more subtle ways than our founders did. For many people guidance doesn’t come through as an audible voice, devic messages, or clear promptings. Mostly our inner source of wisdom – or whatever you would like to call it: Spirit, the Divine, the Universe, the Great Mystery, Life Force, God, etc – talks to us through feelings, visual impressions, intuition, gut feelings, and much more …
To consciously make an effort to receive guidance for daily life, some choose to practise Inner Listening through meditation, attunement, or prayer. Others prefer more active practices e.g. dancing, singing, yoga, or work with tools such as angel cards, pendulums, etc. and for some their inner knowing reveals itself spontaneously in everyday life through their intuition or clear inner promptings, while they are doing everyday tasks like gardening, shopping, doing the dishes, etc.
During her lifetime Eileen’s mission was to encourage people to set aside time to practise Inner Listening as she strongly believed that everybody can reach their inner source of wisdom by themselves – no gurus, priests or other intermediaries needed.
Our invitation: Let’s meditate together
No matter which individual spiritual practices we follow, one of our global community’s shared practices since the early days has been coming together in meditation. All around the planet many groups within the Network of Light meet in person and more recently also online, to share a quiet space of Inner Listening and attunement.
“Attunement is the spiritual art of being completely present, where each moment is an open door to the divine nature of our true experience of living.”
The Findhorn Foundation team has been holding online meditations every weekday morning for nearly a year now and we are looking forward to inviting you to join us in this sacred space soon. Please keep an eye on our website or sign up to our mailing list to be the first to receive future updates.
More about Dorothy’s connection to Nature Spirits …
Read more about Dorothy Maclean’s connection to the Devas in our article An interview with Dorothy Maclean
