“Life is full and overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter.”
Eileen Caddy wrote these words of wisdom over 30 years ago and her voice still resonates with me whenever I find myself at a period of change or doubt or fear.
We tend to hold on to things, don’t we? As humans, we buy and collect and arrange our possessions. We label them, categorize them, box them and even pay to have them kept somewhere because we don’t have room for them.
And with all that boxing and keeping, we lose space. We lose space in our lives for what the next grand adventure will be. We lose time for the new, by looking back too often at what has been.
We hold onto to old hurts,old fears, old pain, instead of letting it go and moving forward.
Eileen Caddy is one of my favorite people because she created Findhorn, an incredibly garden on the northern cost of Scotland in a barren sandy region, bordered by of all things, a garbage dump. She and her three sons and their friend Dorothy Maclean moved to this area because they felt led there, through prayer and meditation.
They trusted that leading and left behind a more successful life in the city to find a new way of being on the land. Together they have spent forty-five years collecting a vast abundance of Mother Nature by finding and caring for the plants that found their way to Findhorn. And now Findhorn is reaching out to the world showing a way to a sustainable future for all of us.
Findhorn Gardens Cottage
To Eileen, each plant holds a unique spirit within it, a spirit that is part of the larger whole, waiting to teach her something. She shares these lessons about her times in the Gardens of Findhorn, where before a vaste wasteland ruled, transformed by her love and patience into great beauty, with whomever is drawn to receive them.
She tells us, “Expect your every need to be met, expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level, expect to grow, as you help others to grow.”
And so like Eileen Caddy, I go to my garden, my little spot of Findhorn and I look around it, marveling at the life I see there and I think about the lessons I learned in my garden, probably the same lessons that all instinctive spiritual gardners learn.
I learned how to study the cycle of Mother Nature and listen to my garden whisper to me, that those cycles match my cycles of life. A time to sow, a time to reap, a time to wait.
I learned that whatever you sow, you will reap. If I sow seeds of plenty and abundance, I will reap a mighty harvest. But if I doubt, and begrudgingly give of my seeds, I will reap a miser’s harvest.
I’ve learned that by waiting for the harvest of my life, I will be rewarded for all those years, when I labored and saw little reward, or thought that there was none coming.
I am reminded of a dear friend who will be moving to South Carolina in September. She is the kind of humble loving servant who asks no reward but has given so freely of her very essence to everyone who crosses her path. She is afraid of the move, of leaving her life behind. But she has to go.
And we are preparing to gather to send her along the way with love and well wishes. As we think back on our years together, I think of the memories we have, of the seeds we sowed in relationship and time spent together. We have been there. We were patient with each other, waiting upon the other to grow and mature.
But if the soil of our lives together had been rocky and cold, how would the seeds of our friendship grown? Miserly and crooked, perhaps, with weak stems that fall easily in the wind, becoming plants that uproot and topple in crisis. Instead, we have sunk roots deep into the rich ground of our shared life and those roots will endure for longer than either of us.
Eileen Caddy says to me, “You are not living by human laws but by divine laws. Expect miracles and see them take place. Hold ever before you the thought of prosperity and abundance, and know that doing so sets in motion forces that will bring it into being.”
Whatever your faith tradition is, this thought holds true. That we live our real life in Spirit, in an inner sanctum where we guard our essence closely, only allowing the very few to see our true hearts, if ever anyone.
In my garden, I have planted many plants. They will go with me to my new home as my friend will journey to her new home. We each, gardening friends, will carry our plants with us and the seeds of our friendship to be planted in new spaces to greet new adventures and new friends.
Letting go of the past and the present may seem impossible, but if the roots we have put down are strong and vital, then they will grow in new places, new spaces. Build a Findhorn wherever you are. You don’t have to be a gardener. You can be a writer, a painter, a lover of animals, or a simple man or woman ready to build his or her own Findhorn.
The Writestuff 