"One of the things I love about Findhorn is the fact that we don't all have the same beliefs, but there is a sense of tolerance, a sense that we're in this together." Ian and I sit in a quiet corner of the community center sharing a simple lunch. He continues: "There are shared hardships. When it gets really cold, we're all in it together. Or when we're eating turnips for the third time this week, we're all in it together. I like that."

Ian is one of the faculty members of the Ecovillage Training Course here at the Findhorn Community. But just a few years ago he had no idea he would be living in the north of Scotland, or teaching interpersonal communication. At the time he was working as a consultant on contracts for Nike in the south of England, and hating it.

"I got very frustrated. I knew what I didn't want to do, but I had no idea what I did want to do," he said.

He had previously sought community in a farming village near Gloucester.

"The village was about 350 people," he said. "About half of them had been there on the land for many generations. The other half were people like me who moved in from towns and cities, looking to settle and wanting a community. That was also a community, but a geographical one, not necessarily one of common ideas or common beliefs. Certainly there were shared values, like valuing the local landscape and nature, but I'm not sure many of the farmers would even have described it that way."

Like many, Ian discovered Findhorn during a rough patch in his life that would turn into a time of self-discovery. He was in the process of splitting up with his wife, and his father had just died. He had stopped working and begun retraining in Nuero-Linguistic Programming, where he heard about Findhorn from one of his colleagues. He first came up to enroll in the Life Purpose Workshop. When he first arrived, he thought, "Here are a bunch of hippies doing this workshop."

But when he walked through the front door of the Cluny Hill Hotel, the part of the Findhorn Community where the accredited college is housed, he says, "I had this overwhelming sense that I'd arrived home. At that time I did not consider myself an intuitive person, a spiritual person or anything like that. But this was a really strong sense." Ian returned to England to sort out his affairs and a few months later returned to Findhorn to stay.

Here, he says, he found something he didn't have in the village where he'd been living.

"Here it's a lot more supportive. If I'm feeling down or stressed, there are people I can turn to for support. They will listen, and if I want help, they will help. And I can do the same for them. It really fulfills my sense of being of service, which is quite a strong ethic for me."

This sense of service is part of Ian's life purpose, which he feels he is getting ever closer to living. "And I also really like sharing meals together in the community center," he adds.

According to Ian, an important factor that unites the Findhorn Community is that, "By and large those of us who are part of the Findhorn Foundation (about a 130 people who live and work within the community, including community staff) all have the same income. There are a few people with special needs who get something extra, but by and large everyone, from the youngest person to my wife who's the Chair of Management here, all earn exactly the same. It doesn't matter whether you run a department or you're cleaning toilets."

The philosophy behind this might be that it eliminates a sense of competition, but it is also based on the fact that people are doing their jobs not just for money, but because they care about the community.

There are drawbacks in "Utopia," which Ian readily admits. The worst part, he says, of living at Findhorn is that sometimes the level of personal interaction can get too pressured. "Sometimes it's hard to get time for yourself." He also mentions there can be lack of privacy when, as in all small communities, people gossip about each other. "In the early stages of a relationship, people start talking about it. And there is lots of turmoil when couples are breaking up."

Despite this, says Ian, "The idealistic side of me would love to see the whole world living the same way — that it wouldn't matter what you did, but rather who you are — and that we would all live according to our needs, not according to our wants."

As Ian and I finish our kale and potatoes, I think about how more people like him could be led to discover Findhorn, and the benefits that its lifestyle provides.

Next week we'll investigate how Findhorn is reaching out to the greater community surrounding it, through its forest regeneration efforts and the Transition Town Forres project, helping make the nearby town, at the head of Findhorn Bay, sustainable.

Elias Alexander is an Ashland resident studying in Findhorn, Scotland, one of dozens of intentional communities dedicated to sustainable living that dot the European map. After undergoing a month-long intensive Ecovillage training course there, he will spend the next three months visiting some of those communities. He intends to find out what they are doing to be sustainable, how they are doing it and what aspects can be expanded to a larger segment of the population. In weekly articles here, you can join him on this journey.