What makes a place truly hospitable to the soul?

At Ecovillage Findhorn, this phrase has become a touchstone. It describes not only how people feel when they arrive, but also how the community organizes itself around deeper values: Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.

Gift from Soil and Soul

The phrase was gifted to the community by Alastair McIntosh (Quaker, philosopher, teacher and author of Soil and Soul), who remarked that when he came to Findhorn to teach, he always experienced it as ‘hospitable to the soul.’

This simple yet profound phrase resonated deeply with me. It offered a way to translate Integral frameworks into everyday language, accessible and welcoming — not just to academics or systems thinkers, but to anyone who longed for a culture of aliveness.

“Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are not abstract ideals — at Ecovillage Findhorn, they are living practices that nourish people, place, and planet.”

Integral City Lens

Ken Wilber framed the four quadrants (subjective, objective, intersubjective, interobjective) as expressions of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness — the philosophical ‘big three.’ By weaving these into Ecovillage Findhorn’s ethos, the community affirms that caring for the inner life, shared culture, systems and structures is not only practical but also sacred.

Thus, being hospitable to the soul becomes more than personal well-being. It reflects a collective alignment: when the Gaia Code of Care is practiced, individuals, community, and planet are nourished together.

Broader Resonance

In today’s turbulent times, many people seek not just solutions, but sanctuaries — places where inner listening, outer practice, and community belonging weave together.

Ecovillage Findhorn, through its three founding principles and its ongoing experiments, models how a community can embody soul hospitality:
– Deep inner listening (Beauty of spirit)
– Work as love in action (Truth in systems)
– Co-creating with the intelligences of nature (Goodness in relationships with Gaia)

“When a community is hospitable to the soul, it becomes not only a refuge but a regenerative seedbed for the future.”

Closing Reflection

To be hospitable to the soul is to invite wholeness. It is to create conditions where people, nature, and spirit flourish together. This is Ecovillage Findhorn’s ongoing gift to the world: not perfection, but a living demonstration that Beauty, Truth, and Goodness can be embodied in daily life.

Where in your own life do you feel most hospitable to the soul? How can you extend that quality outward to others?

These themes are explored in this series of Blogs:

  1. Listening to the Inner Voice: Findhorn’s Call to Community

  2. Scaling Up Consciousness: Applying Integral Frameworks from Local to Global

  3. Hospitable to the Soul: Living with Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

  4. Gaia’s Reflective Organs: Cities, Communities, and Consciousness

  5. Governance in Transition: Tough Love and Collective Responsibility at Findhorn

  6. From Eco-Village to Regenerative Learning Community: A Microcosm for the World