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FINDHORN REFLECTIONS: A very personal take on life inside the famous spiritual community and ecovillage Graham Meitzer, UK: KDP/Createspace, 2015, 136 pages, $US3/£2 (Amazon.com download) or US$7/£5 (paperback), ISBN-13: 978-1512006513
The 53-year-old Findhorn Foundation and community has perhaps been studied and reported more than any other contemporary intentional community. And for good reason: it is a fascinating place with an incredible story. By any measure it is one of the most successful intentional communities, with a global reach through various NGOs, Colleges, Universities, and even the United Nations.
According to Dr. Graham Meitzer, author of the new book Findhorn Reflections, communal living should be humanity's "default setting," since "it's the most natural way for human beings to cohabitate." Unfortunately, though, "only a tiny (but happily, not irrelevant) proportion of the world's population will be privileged enough to live in sustainable (intentional) communities like ours." Hence the need to spread the message.
Many books and innumerable articles have been written about Findhorn Foundation and community, some scholarly, such as Carol Riddell's The Findhorn Community, some almost hagiographical, such as Paul Hawken's The Magic of Findhorn, and others scathingly critical, such as Steven Castro's Hypocrisy and Dissent Within the Findhorn Foundation. Findhorn Reflections fits into none of these categories.
The author has been an academic and architect, as well as a life-long intentional community junkie. His Ph.D. thesis was about cohousing, and led to the well-known book, Sustainable Community: Learning from the cohousing model. He has researched and lived in a wide range of intentional communities ranging from hippie communes in Australia to Israeli kibbutzim and...