FAQs

It goes back to our beginnings. Our three founders came to a caravan park – which is now known as The Park – in the early 1960s. A community of like-minded people developed around them, and in 1972 the community was officially registered as a Scottish charity called the Findhorn Foundation.

The Community has continued to expand and draw more and more people over the last several decades. Today the Findhorn Foundation is the spiritual ‘learning hub’ of the Community, employing coworkers who hold guests and look after large parts of The Park and gardens.

The Foundation is rooted within the larger Findhorn Ecovillage Community of people who are drawn to live and work here, as well as the organisations that have grown around it, all united by the common vision of co-creating a thriving and loving world, and the core spiritual practices of our original founders – Inner Listening, Co-Creation with the Intelligence of Nature, and Work as Love in Action.

We honour and embrace all paths to spiritual growth – as the Foundation and a community we don’t follow a specific religion or dogma. We are however guided by three spiritual principles we practice every day, called Inner Listening, Co-Creation with the Intelligence of Nature, and Work as Love in Action.

In the Foundation, we try to activate and embody the Sacred every day.

Everyone is welcome to visit and there are several ways to do it!

As a day visitor, simply stroll around The Park to take a look – for background and history you can buy a guide book in the Phoenix Shop, or contact [email protected] to arrange a guide.

For longer visits, you can join one of the Findhorn Foundation’s on-site learning workshops and courses or create your own tailor-made retreat, staying in Foundation accommodation and joining the different activities on offer. Alternatively, book into any of the private accommodation options such as the Findhorn Bay Holiday Park, right next door to The Park on Findhorn Bay or B&Bs in The Park or neighbouring villages such as Findhorn and Kinloss, to simply soak up the peace of this area.

The Community is made up of people who work for the Findhorn Foundation and those who live and work independently of the Foundation, but who are inspired and aligned with our common vision and practices.

Watch our careers page for adverts if you’d like to apply to be a Foundation coworker.

If you move here and find your own work and place to live, there are many ways to integrate with the whole community through events and networking. Joining the New Findhorn Association (NFA) is a great place to start.

The NFA is a community association for people and organisations in a 50 mile radius of The Park, which holds community aspects as they evolve.
You can also subscribe to the Rainbow Bridge, the Community’s weekly print and online magazine, for sharings, news of what’s on, as well as accommodation and services available.

David Spangler, a key early member and now Spiritual Director of the Lorian Association, wrote this about the Community: ‘There is no more difficult place to be than in the midst of a pioneering and creative centre. It is an exciting place, but a challenging one … it is not a retirement village. It is not a spiritual retreat, or a place for quiet meditation. It is a place for strong, dedicated, joyously creative souls who are willing to work … to unfold and demonstrate a practical vision for a new world. In so doing, they find that the new world has been within themselves all the time.’

In some departments there are occasionally possibilities of being a residential volunteer, but we generally don’t make woofing-style arrangements.

The Rainbow Bridge is the Community’s weekly print and online magazine, and it’s a great place to find accommodation or to advertise skills you have to share.

For facilitated workshops we ask that participants have a good understanding of/speaking level of English. Some workshops also ask you to write an introductory letter to us in English, in your own words. If you are at all unsure about your level, please contact us at Bookings ([email protected]) and include your telephone number, to arrange an informal chat.

The Foundation is a charitable trust and relies heavily on donors and friends who support our work in the world.

Up until March 2020, over 80% of our income came from workshops, events and conferences hosted here at The Park and at Cluny Hill, our site in Forres.

The Covid pandemic, however, forced us to close to guests, which plunged the Foundation into severe financial difficulty and a tragic time of redundancies of roles that, with no more guests, were no longer needed. Without massive support from our incredible network of friends and donors, we would probably not have survived.

If you are interested in helping us share our spiritual values with the world, please consider supporting us by becoming a regular contributing member of our network.

The Findhorn Foundation online shop, currently in development, will include books and other media about the Foundation, our stories and our founders – Eileen and Peter Caddy, and Dorothy Maclean. In the meantime, please find them in mainstream online bookstores.

These are some of the most popular reads.

 

The Transformation Game® and the Angel® Cards were created and developed by Joy Drake and Kathy Tyler here at the Findhorn Foundation. They created InnerLinks, where you can buy all their products as well as find more information on the Game and where you can play it. Also see our calendar of events for Games being played here in Findhorn and online.

Having lived in North America for a number of years and been actively involved in leading workshops around the world, Dorothy Maclean returned to live in the Findhorn Foundation Community. She passed away peacefully on 12 March 2020, three months after her 100th birthday.

Eileen Caddy was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for ‘service to spiritual inquiry’ in 2004 and was a source of inspiration for the many thousands of visitors to the Findhorn Foundation and for the many more who have read her books. Eileen lived at the Foundation, dividing her time between her family and community affairs, until her death in 2006.

After playing a leading role in the formation and organisation of the Community, Peter Caddy left in 1979 to continue his spiritual work internationally. After a long and varied journey of spiritual service and personal development in areas as diverse as Hawaii and Austria, he died in a car accident in February 1994.

Please email us and we’ll do our best to find the answer!