Britta Schmitz: Finding Nature and the Divine

I came to Findhorn for Experience Week a few months after my partner died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 31. A friend had advised me to read Ken Wilber’s book Grace and Grit about his wife Treya’s journey dying of cancer. I read about Treya’s experience at Findhorn and was fascinated. So even before I was accepted as a participant I booked my flight.

All my life I had this feeling that something wasn’t right, as if there had always been some underlying bad smell in the air, or I’d been wearing a belt that was too tight. And yet there were moments when I didn’t experience life like this: as a child on holidays with my mum by the sea, as a teenager visiting the Taizé monastic community in France, as well as during my late twenties, when I joined shamanic rituals like fire walking, sweat lodges and moon dances.

I was longing for a tribal, spiritual life close to Nature, not only while on holiday or during a workshop, but every day. But I always thought: I can’t do that – only far out hippies do that kind of thing. I have to keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve got my PhD, I work at university, no matter how much I cry in the mornings or how wrong it feels walking up the steps to my office and living in a city, I will keep doing this. This is what one does.

When I arrived at Cluny Hill for Experience Week I loved it. I loved Findhorn and the people surrounding me, but I knew this wasn’t the right place for me then. Too sociable, too much going on. I knew I would lose myself in all the activities, whereas I needed to find myself. I remember calling my mum and saying: ‘Mum, I might like to live in a community like this,’ and she said with a deep inner knowing: ‘If you lived like this once you’d never be able to return to normal life.’ She felt that once I had lived a lifestyle that completely suited me I would never again want to live the way I had before.

So what to do? Reading the Findhorn brochure of events, I opened the page that showed the Isle of Erraid – a tiny satellite community on the West Coast of Scotland. It was one of the strongest moments in my life. I felt with every cell of my being that this is what I wanted. To move to a tiny island, drink rainwater, bath in peat water, heat the house with wood grown on the neighbouring island, eat community-grown food, experience wild beauty and be one with the sea, the tides, the moon, the land and the weather in a small community that shares, meditates, sings together and celebrates the Celtic Festivals.

I fell in love with Erraid. It was like finally coming home. Even though leaving my old life as Frau Dr Schmitz at the University of Basel wasn’t easy, moving to the island was one of the scariest and best things I’ve ever done in my whole life. I could write a book about all the magical and beautiful experiences – and also the terrible ones. On Erraid I experienced some of the best and worst times of my life.

I am still deeply in love with this island and visit several times a year. A piece of my heart lives there and I go back to reconnect with this part of myself that only comes alive on Erraid. There are no words to describe it. It is like I have dreamt it and have been craving it all my life, not knowing where to find it… a deep connection with the raw, untamed, rugged West Coast wilderness. Being one with Nature and the Divine.

I always wondered how I would leave the island as I knew nobody stays forever. How would I know when it was time to go? When I arrived on Erraid a community member told me that the island would throw me out when it was my time to go. I didn’t believe him: an island kicking me out? And then after five years it happened: I’d just spent a winter at Findhorn and when I came back to my beloved island it was crystal clear: not one day longer!

So I left my lovely island and our lovely flourishing community within three weeks and moved to Findhorn. The next adventure began.

I deeply love Findhorn too. I worked in Cullerne garden which felt very similar to my Erraid experience of being in a small community and co-creating with Nature.

I have been in Findhorn ever since and just yesterday I talked to friends about one of my deepest spiritual experiences. Interestingly it didn’t involve any ritual, song, dance, extreme physical activity or meditation. I was sitting in the sanctuary on Erraid and saw sunlight on the wooden wall and knew with every cell of my body that this was the perfect moment. Right there and then. I also deeply knew that every moment is the perfect moment. The feeling was beyond words. I felt that ‘all is very, very well’ and knew that this place inside of me is always accessible at any given time, wherever I am in the world.