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Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Sensing, Sound, and Silence
April 18–21, 2024
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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 [email protected]
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Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Exploring Gurdjieff’s Sacred Dances
through the Lens of Performance
May 16–19, 2024
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Observing the movements practice in the Dalcroze studio: Gurdjieff,
Thomas de Hartmann (barely visible on the piano), Alexandre de Salzmann, Madame Ouspensky, Mrs. Nicoll and Maurice Nicoll, August 1922.
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100 years ago, public demonstrations of Gurdjieff’s Movements were given at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, at Carnegie Hall in New York, and also in theaters in Boston and Chicago. These were gala events on a large scale: the performances lasted as long as 4 hours, and included not only the dances, but also instrumental music and “religious phenomena.” The dancers had worked for many years in preparation, and the quality of their execution was remarkable.
In Paris, champagne flowed from the fountains outside, along with colored lights. Trays of baklava were offered to the guests in the foyer. The press was invited, and from the newspaper reviews we read that the audience was enthralled.
Today, performances of the Movements are very rare. Of those that are given, almost none are shown to the general public: more often than not they are presented only to those already connected with Gurdjieff’s teaching.
And yet, in J. G. Bennett’s book, The Sevenfold Work, manifestation is considered the fourth line of Work, in which the performer becomes a channel for something higher to enter an event. The participation of the audience is implied and essential. An action can then occur which would otherwise be unavailable.
The primary activity for the seminar will be the presentation of a number of Movements for performance. This will enable us to also address the following issues:
- Three Lines of Work as they relate to the Enneagram and the process of preparing and performing the Movements.
- The role of the audience in contributing to an event: how to move from passive observer to active participant in the search for meaning.
- The interrelationship between the Movements and the Movements music.
- Utilizing improvisation as a tool for understanding the underlying structure of the Movements.
- Talks/discussions on a wide variety of subjects, including the history of the Movements, the intelligence of the moving center, and much more.
In this seminar, three diverse but kindred spirits— Deborah Rose Longo, a well- known teacher of the Movements; Elan Sicroff, a pianist who has worked extensively with the music of Thomas de Hartmann; and Anthony Blake, writer and student of J.G. Bennett, who was a leading exponent of Gurdjieff’s ideas, will come together to ask questions, experiment and encourage a fresh exploration of many different aspects of the Movements.
|  | Copying Positions in Canon. Lily Galumian (front) gives the positions to be copied by the group.1922 | |
The seminar will be held in the historic Claymont Mansion and begins with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday, May 16, and end after lunch on Sunday, May 19.
The cost of the event including meals and lodging is $495. ($450 if registered and paid before April 1.)
For participants not staying in the Mansion, the cost is $340 ($325 if registered and paid before April 1.)
For more information and to register please visit our website: www.society.claymont.org or contact, the registrar, Amy Silver: [email protected]
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Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Annual Movements Retreat
June 12–22, 2024
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Dear Friends,
We welcome both old friends and new to join us in our ongoing efforts with the movements, our encouragement of conscious relationship emergent leadership, collaborative teaching and most centrally, our ever deepening work with the movements in practice and support for living and loving more fully and consciously.
For more information about our 2024 gathering please see our website: movements-retreat.org. For further information contact our registrar and site organizer, Amy Silver: [email protected]
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Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Higher Energies Workshop
July 10–14, 2024
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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 [email protected]
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EMBODIED AWARENESS
Alexander Technique, Developmental Movement and Breath
Residential Workshop
June 26th–30th, 2024
Claymont Court, Mansion
FACULTY:
Robin Gilmore, Diana Bradley, Renée Jackson
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About The Workshop
Explore possibilities of freedom and ease to enhance your life. This immersive workshop provides movement learning that can deepen our sense of self and how we relate to the world around us. Those new to the Alexander Technique as well as trainees and AT teachers are welcome.
Mornings will begin with individual hands-on attention (known as “walkabouts”). Small groups will look at areas of interest including performance, daily activities and teaching skills. The large group classes will include developmental movement (from the ground to standing) and exploration of breathing coordination. Gentle, easy to follow movement practices will take place throughout the day and evening. Some sessions will take place outdoors on the beautiful acreage surrounding Claymont’s historic mansion.
Our faculty members bring expertise in a breadth of areas all grounded in the Alexander Technique. We carry on the approach of Marjorie Barstow, one of the first generation of AT teachers, by applying Alexander principles to a wide range of activities including performance, athletics, martial arts and everyday tasks. We have taught together for many years and enjoy collaborative teaching that draws from the interests and needs of our students. Workshop director Robin Gilmore has a decades long connection with Claymont as a longtime participant in the East Coast Contact Improvisation Jam.
More details soon to come at www.chesapeakealexander.com
Please join the mailing list for this event so that you can inhabit this wondrous terrain for a time of deep learning and exploration.
For more information email: [email protected]
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Register for Fall Events 2024 | |
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The Mindful Enneagram
A Five Day Retreat
At Claymont Court, Charles Town, West Virginia
September 18–22, 2024
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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: [email protected]
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A letter from the Claymont Planning Committee regarding the
50th Anniversary Celebration:
Claymont Society 50th Anniversary Celebration
October 16-20, 2024
“If a man desires sincerely and seriously, and out of no mere curiosity, to attain to the knowledge of the way leading to Real Being, and if he fulfills to this end all that is requested of him and begins, in fact, among other things to aid indirectly, and from his very first step, the attainment of this by others, he will, by this act alone, become as it were the forming ground for the real data contributing to the manifestation of objective and actual Good.” Appropriately, from The Herald of the Coming Good.
Mr. Gurdjieff, in some of his early writing indicated that people working together in the sense of being could become sources of good in this world. The obstacles faced by Mr. G in establishing his work are well-known and well-documented.
Through the work and sacrifice of countless people over the years we have been able to participate and benefit from the above-mentioned good. It is with deep gratitude that we look to acknowledge and celebrate several significant milestones that are rapidly approaching us this year.
Our founder and teacher, J.G. Bennett, in the midst of his Sherborne residential project, looked to the future. With great cost to himself and with the help of numerous others, he managed to find and acquire the Claymont property in 1974 for the establishment of a community, firmly centered on the work that Mr. G transmitted to him and many others. Mr Bennett's vision, profound and far-reaching, was left in the hands of others, as 1974 would also mark the end of Bennett's ‘planetary existence.’
This year, 2024, marks fifty years since the founding of the Claymont Society as well as fifty years since the passing of its founder. There have been countless challenges along the way, and no one claims to have fulfilled The Call for a New Society. We are now fifty years into the project and it is up to us how it is to unfold for the years during and beyond our lifetimes.
This, therefore, is a great time to come together, acknowledge the events that have occurred along the way, celebrate the greater present moment in which we find ourselves, and consider the possibilities for Claymont’s future.
We are calling out to all who have taken part in the past as well as all those connected inwardly and outwardly with our core practices and aspirations to come together from October 16–20 2024, for an event marking the 50 years of the Society.
Please take an active part. We are interested in your input and ideas. We have volunteers locally who are working with the details of preparation and planning. However, we view and sense this event in a larger context and hope that others will be active toward it in a positive way and will contribute time, care and thought into bringing about an event worthy of the Occasion.
The event will begin with dinner on Wednesday, October 16th and end after lunch on October 20th.
The cost for the event is $495. However, do not let the cost prevent you from participating, financial assistance is available.
For more information and to register please contact Amy Silver: [email protected]
For information about the Claymont Society visit: www.society.claymont.org
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Note from the editor: Your ideas and feedback are always welcome! We would love to hear from you. To contribute to the newsletter, please send pictures, Claymont articles, or community announcements to: [email protected]
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