Relaxation and sensing can help us hear what we need to hear from inside ourselves and from Above. Chanting of aspirational phrases can help us interrupt automatic and habitual thoughts and feelings, especially the negative ones, toward a state of inner relaxation, openness and receptivity. During this Spring weekend, let’s take a break from busyness of mind and heart and open to the beauty around us.

This weekend will combine some familiar Fourth Way practices with Zikr (chanting and dance) from the Mevlevi tradition. Time to listen to silence and to resonate with the beauty of Spring at Claymont. Time to open to what we need to hear, what we need to receive, and perhaps even Grace. 



The seminar will be led by Hardy Mason. Hardy is a Mevlevi Sufi sheik and long-time student of the Fourth Way. 

Note: Participants on the March work weekend at Claymont studying sensation may find this gathering a useful follow-on, but no previous experience is required.

The weekend will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday, April 18 and end after lunch on Sunday, April 21. All activities will be at the Great Barn.

Suggested donation for the weekend is $195 if you are staying overnight at Claymont and $95 if you are not staying overnight at Claymont. However, do not let the cost prevent you from participating, financial assistance is available. 

For more information visit our website www.society.claymont.org

To register contact Amy Silver at claymontgathering@hotmail.com

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The story of entering heaven is like a tale of two doors. These doors, unique to each of us, are entrances to two different levels between heaven and earth, between higher and lower, between us and our Source — The Source.



The first door is one we can open, by our own efforts. This entails building a platform in front of the wall, a spot where we can stand, gain our bearings in that high place, look for the door, find it, and open it. When we do open that door, even just a crack, the Light streams through, suffusing us with its ecstatic warmth. We build the platform by our inner work. And by further, wholehearted search, we may find the door and open it. Prayer can be part of that search.



Once we know our way to the door and can open it, that purifying Light gradually cleanses us, enabling us to open ourselves and thereby open that door wider and more often, almost at will. But we cannot pass through it until we have emptied ourselves enough and absorbed sufficient Light to stabilize our access to it. Then the precincts of the Real becomes a place for our further Work, involving a high energy crucial for all of us.

Yet, there is another wall at an even higher level. To move beyond that wall, we need the second door, which only opens from the other side. That door we cannot find by our own efforts, nor can we open it. It finds us, when we are ready, and the One who lives beyond it opens it to us. Here, the need is for total purity, complete emptying. Any gap between us and that One keeps this second door closed. Only by becoming perfectly empty can we hope to return to the place we never left, the place of no doors, no walls, and no separation.

Higher energies are the substance of these three realms: the platform before the first door, the Sacred Light beyond that door, and the Oneness beyond the second door. Our relationship to each of the energies differs. Toward some, we can learn to be active. Others require pure receptivity. And in between we have a third mode, which we may call directed receptivity.



In this workshop, we will explore approaches to the higher energies, by means of inner exercises, meditation, Gurdjieff movements, presence, and the practice of inwardly stepping aside to make room for the Sacred. What is presence, if not an opportunity to open ourselves to allow the Sacred to see through us, as us?

The workshop will be led by Joseph Naft. He is the author of www.innerfrontier.org and of seven books, most recently Light on the Way. He studied with J.G. Bennett at Sherborne, England in 1974, and has led Fourth Way groups since 1976. Deborah Rose Longo will teach movements, along with Joe.

The workshop will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, July 10 and end with lunch on Sunday, July 14. All activities will be at the Great Barn.

You are cordially invited to join us in our work and exploration. Participants must have experience in Fourth Way groups or courses.

Suggested donation for the workshop is $400 if you are staying overnight at Claymont and $220 if you are not staying overnight at Claymont. However, do not let the cost prevent you from attending, as financial assistance is available.

For more information visit our website: www.society.claymont.org

To register for this event contact Amy Silver at claymontgathering@hotmail.com

Click here for Flyer



The Buddha teaches us how to become free of “dukkha,” unnecessary suffering, and awaken to the deeper capacities of our true essential “Buddha” nature. He emphasizes the need for three levels of practice: mindfulness of body, feeling, and mind, as the “direct path” to liberation from dukkha. This is the Middle Way, a balanced Eightfold Path to inner and outer harmony, with the threefold practice of mindfulness at its core.

Similar to the Buddha, the Twentieth Century mystic, George Gurdjieff, taught that humans are “asleep” based on a fundamental imbalance between body, feeling, and mind. There are three types of this imbalance based on over-reliance and identification with one of these three centers. We all know someone who tends to overthink things or others who are particularly dominated by their emotions or their bodily impulses. Gurdjieff taught his students how to awaken and live from the higher capacities of all three centers. He also introduced the Enneagram, and it has become widely used as a rich map of nine basic ways this fundamental imbalance of the three centers occurs and specific paths to awakening based on our particular “type.”  

This retreat will use mindfulness and the Enneagram to help us see clearly, in a practical way, our particular individual type of imbalance between thinking, feeling, and movement - the chief feature of our type that keeps us locked in the trance of dukkha. We will use the Buddha’s three core foundations of mindfulness practice and Gurdjieff’s Movements to actually see and experience our Enneagram type, how to awaken from it, and how to live in greater balance and harmony of body, heart, and mind. 

This retreat will be led by Enneagram-certified IMCW meditation teacher,

Rob Creekmore, Gurdjieff Movements teacher, Deborah Rose Longo, and the Executive Director of the Claymont Society, Amy Silver.

This retreat begins with dinner at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, September 18, and ends after lunch at noon on Sunday,September 22.

Registration begins on May 21, 2024 at 4:30 PM EDT. For more information and to register visit the Insight Meditation Society (IMCW) webpage here. For more information contact Rob Creekmore at: robcreekmore@verizon.net