Reflections On Worthy Causes

Much earlier today I added the following to my blog of yesterday:

"My feeling on the matter [i.e., the betrayal of the American Dream] is as deep as though I had been one of the Founders myself.  Madison, or Washington; that degree of commitment to the Cause."

I would be proud to have been either of those two illustrious personages of our past, as a nation, and as a species.  But that's not what I want to talk about in this blog.  I want to follow up on the idea of how even 'worthy causes' are born, flourish, then wither, and ultimately die.  How everything has its season.  In a realm of seasons.  To say: of stages, leading, ultimately, to their death, as a form.  Though maybe not entirely as an idea...

When I was reflecting on my disgust with the American Experience as it exists today, so ridden with corruption that it is doubtful whether it should even be fought for - at least in its present form - I was reminded of how the same sort of thing happened to the spiritual community where I spent so many years of my life, before returning to my home town here in 'the States,' to see my days out in the sun.  (Though I don't really have any idea of releasing this particular body.  Funny, that.  Anyway; to continue with the thought at hand.)  On the one hand, I was not ready to leave it, because I felt that it was 'under attack,' from these sorts of 'change' forces, and part of me wanted to engage in its protection.  To say: In the protection of the community that I had joined, lo, these many years ago, now.  I was beginning to think of the situation as that 'I had joined a spiritual community of members, and it was turning into a workshop centre with employees'.  Particularly while I had been away - for nearly 8 years, living Down Under, in Australia (another story) - and when I came back (having started to feel drawn back, to 'my work'), they had gone to a system of contracts with their Staff.  They said that it was about making things clearer, regarding vacation 'rights,' and such  But it was, really, the beginning of the end, of the community.  At least, as it had been.  

They say that energy follows thought.  This was the beginning of the 'thought' of becoming, rather than a community, a business.  And I had not joined it to become an employee of a business.  So I left; to put it in a nutshell.

This is not to say that I did not recognize that there were some legitimate changes during  that time frame.  For one thing, the world economic picture was changing; and from a place where people came for varying periods of time, to give Seva, or Service - to Gaia - and then went back to their lives in the commercial world, or, having independent means, stayed, and began growing what was/is called an 'eco-village' - with reflections of 'living lightly on the planet,' in the form of alternative sources of energy, and the use of gray water, and using renewable sources of building materials and so forth - the community at the heart of the Eco Village growing up around it1 began to take on the 'image' of a haven: from a world that wasn't working so well economically, for one thing, and didn't reflect many people's values, for another.  So, it was a different situation from when I joined it, back in the mid-'70s, strictly because of its spiritual values.  As reflected in its main founding principles, of 'Work Is Love In Action,' and 'Perfection In All Things' - a centre, then, of Demonstration.      

Now, I need to be totally honest here, about my reasons, and the founding reasons for the community.  When I first came across information about the community - known as the Findhorn Foundation2 - I was particularly struck by the fact that its founders3 had been inspired by the idea of building "a vast City of Light".  What?! I thought when coming across this nugget of information; "tell me more."  For, I had, in my own life, years previously, been inspired by the idea of being in on the building of a City of Light.  I never knew where the idea came from (I certainly had never read it), or what, precisely, it meant.  Maybe these people could fill me in further...

Long story short: It turned out that Peter - who believed absolutely in the high-energy source of Eileen's guidance, and whose role in the founding 'trinity' was to carry it out to the letter - assumed that that meant an actual physical city, and tried to take over various residences in that area accordingly (and which got him into trouble with the locals accordingly; who, being dour Scots at the best of times, and haters of the 'damn Sassenachs' at the worst, did not take kindly to the schemes of this outlander, no matter how successful he had been in managing a local hotel), on the way to such a vision for the area.  Whereas I had an open mind as to what the term might mean.  It could have meant an actual physical city.  It could also have meant an etheric City, inspiring humanity to 'bring it down' into the physical, as the physical rose a notch to meet it.  It could also have meant a like-minded community of souls wherever they happened to be physically.  And with the advent of the Internet, I thought that probably more likely to be the case.  However, that didn't mean that I took kindly to the changes in the mentality of the 'community's' membership that was taking place over the years   It felt to me like a sellout of the basic vision of the place.  More Mammon than Metatron.   

But I'm getting into 'spiritual' concepts here.  I just felt like setting this particular matter straight.  And clarifying why it is painful to me to see good ideas become 'weathered' with time, until the original impulse is lost in the wash. 

But then, I suppose that we are supposed to experience such feelings.  In order not to put too much energy into the realm of forms.   

Where moth and dust can corrupt. 

And do.  As is their nature.                                  

--

footnotes:

1 I used to think of it like what happened in the Middle Ages when Bernard of Clairvaux started a monastic order in the south of France, around which a village grew up.  First things  first; and different strokes for different folks.  I thought of the Foundation as the monastic order at the heart of the surrounding village.  We were there for different reasons that they were.  But the difference was disappearing......

2 It took its name from the caravan (trailer) park where it began: the Findhorn Bay Caravan Park, near the fishing village of Findhorn, on a peninsula forming one side of a small bay off the south side of the Moray Firth.
   I first came across mention of the community in a (very interesting) book entitled 'The Secret Life of Plants' (they were known for 'talking to their plants'), which then led me to a book about the community that - synchronistically - had just come out, 'The Magic of Findhorn,' by fellow Californian Paul Hawken.        

3 an English couple named Peter and Eileen Caddy, and their spiritual partner, Dorothy Maclean, a Canadian,  Peter, quite the intuitive - from his training in the Rosicrucian Order - had felt drawn to 'link up' with Eileen, another man's wife at the time, who ended up hearing a voice in meditation one day - which said to her, "Be still and know that I am God" - and they ended up following her 'guidance,' which ultimately led them to start the spiritual community.  Dorothy's role in the team was as the 'instrument' through whom came the link to what she called the Devic kingdom - the angelic realm behind the forms of Nature.  All another story.