The Joy of the Elemental Kingdom
When I first visited Findhorn in 1980 there was a lot of talk about working with the Nature Spirits or elementals. It was only 5 years since ROC had passed and the mindset was still alive at that time that everything we do we do together. There are elementals who help us clean the toilets, elementals who help us make food, or tidy the cabins, or grow the gardens. Everything we do we undertake together in collaboration with the Elementals who bind our energy into the work we are doing.
The unmistakable signature of the involvement of Elementals and their close cooperation is the presence of Joy. When there is Joy in the work it is being done with the closest cooperation of the Elemental realm. Their nature is Joyful.
Unlike human beings Elementals do not question who they are or what they are supposed to be doing? There is no doubt in their being, since they are aligned with God. How could it be otherwise? We are all products of the Lord and so, we do all we do, for the Lord.
Without the burden of choice that clouds human mentality, and thus action, the Elemental Kingdom rejoices in the Presence of the Lord. There is no question of doing it to Perfection, for it is the Lord who brings the Perfection to the activities. By doing all in accordance with Divine Will inevitably it is filled with Joy and Perfection.
As humans we walk a befuddled path, stumbling along, sometimes aligned with Beauty, often lost in the seeking of it. This is the solitary nature of the human being. Each is responsible for the choices he or she makes, and once having made that choice often revisits it wondering whether it could have been done better. Some schools of self betterment teach ‘never doubt your choices. Weigh the issues, make your decision, act on it and let that be an end to the matter’. There are many who live by this, never thinking to question themselves once they have chosen a course of action.
On the Scrapheap
When Peter Caddy found himself unemployed ‘on the scrap heap’, literally, an old RAF rubbish dump, he was perplexed and turning to his wife and their companion Dorothy Maclean, asked for guidance. Living together squashed into a caravan the opportunity to get out and begin to build a garden on this derelict land seemed like a godsend. But Peter knew nothing about gardening. When Dorothy Maclean was given the guidance to ‘commune with Nature’ she thought it meant lying soaking up the sun among the sand dunes that surrounded them. Peter had other ideas. ‘Ah, you can help me with the garden,’ he said.
He would ask how close to plant cabbages, and which plants liked to live together, and Dorothy would find the answers that Nature gave her and relate them to Peter. Peter would immediately put them into practice. This was not new for any of them. They had been living with a strict spiritual discipline since the early 1950s in the clear understanding that ‘God will Provide’. They found themselves ten years later putting that adage to the test.
As the Elementals saw Peter at work and recognised that here was a man who could keep his word so they began to come closer and work enthusiastically with the humans who lived by the Word of God. This was to be a grand experiment. Now the kingdoms of Nature could work together and show the world how Heaven could be restored on Earth through willing action in accordance with the Will of the Divine.
When John Willoner arrived in the late 1960s he helped Peter clean more land and on Peter’s advice, alongside him, would dig Love into the land for the coming two years. This was the solid foundation on which the Findhorn garden grew. And it grew phenomenal plants. 50 pound cabbages. Roses that bloomed in the middle of winter and some so large it took two hands to hold them. This was beyond the ordinary, in soil which was largely sand and seaweed.
Self-engrossed
As more people passed through to look at the extraordinary results of cooperation with Nature spirits, so the focus began to move away from the garden and towards the self-involved human beings. It had been our human failing since the Fall of Man, recorded in allegorical form in the Bible. We had become self-engrossed to such an extent that we had lost our memories of the inner kingdoms, and that we were ever part of something greater than ourselves. We had forgotten that the Divine was present in everything we did, and every situation we found ourselves in. Instead, we, lost humans, began to look for something else, and found Power. The dwindling light within us told us we were Divine and we took it literally to mean we could do anything we liked without consequences. Today we stand on the brink of extinction and desperately seek answers to the self-created plight in which we find ourselves. Since Money has become the great symbol of power the aim is to make most of it so that we have the widest choices.
Believing we have discovered the Source of Life in Genetics companies carry on clandestine experiments, tearing chromosomes apart and pushing alien structures into them in the hope we can produce – the ultimate male figure, the absolute feminine beauty, the indefatigable warrior. All of which is derived from our thinking. Most of it devoid of Joy, driven by Greed.
The Triumph of Joy
Yet the results of the Findhorn garden stand as a triumph for all to witness of Joy, the results of cooperation with the Elementals, and working with an opened heart. There is no more successful way forwards than this.
Yet those who seek to practice this way of life, or have traditionally done so, are dismissed as cranks, or relegated to the rubbish bin of humanity as primitive cultures. Some do recognise that, as husbandmen of the land, these traditional societies are better keepers of the land than any multinational conglomerate seeking to own every inch of land for profit. Even to the extent of destroying any plant or animal, insect or bird, that will not turn a profit for the company. Where is the Joy in that? Where is the Life? Life spreads and shares its abundance through Joy and Enthusiasm. Not through sterile products of a limited mind. A mind limited to the profit motif.
From the realms of Light and Joy, of Love and Laughter, humanity is steadily creating a world of Depression and Desperation, while seeking ways to suppress others and prevent them from taking what the oppressors claim to be rightfully theirs. Money and Power are false gods, empty promises.
Light and Song, the humming of bees and chirruping of insects, are the sounds of Joy and a Joy filled landscape. When ‘Share’ takes over from ‘Own’, we shall begin to make our way back to the fold we left so recently. The Lie of giving that is laid out in The Gift by Marcel Mauss, and is upheld by Universities as ‘the way of the world’, is ignorant of the abundance that grows and flows all around us, the product of One Divine Life Force on this planet. Not a thing that can be captured and locked down, but something which is free and spreads its Joy widely and Willingly.
If there is no Joy in it, question why you are doing it. It is an indication that something is wrong. ‘Heaven tomorrow’, the churches have always taught us, as excuse for the toil that keeps them in costume. This land could be Heaven today if we did but open our eyes to its wonder and not seek to answer every clue without pause to consider. Instant answers are often false. Yet will we ever learn?
