Upcoming Events

Regular Community Events

  • Monthly Movements Classes
    See the Calendar for details.
  • Work Weekends
    See the Calendar for details.
  • Thursday Night Inner Work – 8:00pm.
    Currenty being held on Zoom.
    Join us to explore the spiritual side of Gurdjieff’s work. We work collaboratively to share our experiences, our personal journeys, and to reflect on the readings and practical exercises. All are welcome, but please, contact us for details. 

  • Morning Meditations & Sittings 6:30am – 7:30pm.
    Mondays – Fridays, Barn Community Room.
    Sit with the community and be a part of our daily practice. Some mornings are guided meditations or sittings, others are on your own. Interested? Contact us!

Full Calendar

Jul
10
Wed
2024
Higher Energies Workshop @ Claymont Court Great Barn
Jul 10 @ 6:30 pm – Jul 14 @ 3:00 pm
Higher Energies Workshop @ Claymont Court Great Barn

Higher Energies Workshop at the Barn led by Joe Naft

DOWNLOAD FLYER for more info

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 and to register please contact Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.

Oct
16
Wed
2024
Claymont 50th Year Celebration @ The Great Barn
Oct 16 @ 6:00 pm – Oct 19 @ 2:00 pm
Claymont 50th Year Celebration @ The Great Barn

Click to REGISTER here

Download Flyer

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 16th to 2oth 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 16 and end after lunch on October 20.
Lodging and activities will be at the Great Barn at the Claymont Society in Charles Town, WV.

The cost for the event is $495 including meals and lodging.  However, do not let the cost prevent you from participating, financial assistance is available.

For more information and to register please contact Amy Silver at claymontgathering@hotmail.com.

Feb
21
Fri
2025
Biochar Burn at Claymont @ The Claymont Mansion
Feb 21 @ 10:00 am – 3:00 pm
Biochar Burn at Claymont @ The Claymont Mansion

Click Here to Register

Free and open to the public. All ages are welcome, though youth must be accompanied by an adult. Registration is required.

PVMN Continuing Education and Volunteer Credit Eligible

What is biochar? In this hands-on demonstration, you’ll learn how to create biochar from unwanted organic matter (we’ll be using recently removed Autumn Olive shrubs as feedstock), how to safely operate a biochar kiln, and learn about new methods for managing non-native species and enhancing forest resiliency.

(Rain date: March 7)

Click for more info here

Mar
27
Thu
2025
Work Weekend – Educating Essence @ Claymont Court Great Barn
Mar 27 @ 6:30 pm – Mar 30 @ 2:00 pm

Download the flyer

March 27 – 30, Work Weekend at the Barn with a theme of Educating Essence.

Seminar by Hardy Mason. The weekend starts with dinner at 6:30pm Thursday, March 27th.

For more information and to register please contact, the registrar, Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.

 

 

May
10
Sat
2025
Aging as a Spiritual Practice webinar series @ Online on Zoom
May 10 @ 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Aging as a Spiritual Practice webinar series @ Online on Zoom

Aging as a Spiritual Practice webinar series

Download Flyer

Spiritual Practices While Aging From a Fourth Way and Multi-Dimensional Perspective.

with Jerry Toporvsky

Saturday talks on Zoom 2-5pm ET | $50 / session or three for $120
Contact registrar.ics4way@gmail.com for registration

May 10
May 31
June14

Jun
4
Wed
2025
The Mindful Enneagram Retreat @ Claymont Court
Jun 4 @ 6:30 pm – Jun 8 @ 2:00 pm
The Mindful Enneagram Retreat @ Claymont Court

Balancing the Three Centers through Meditation, Movements, and the Enneagram

Lead by Deborah Rose Longo and Rob Creekmore

June 4 – 8, 2025

Click for EVENT REGISTRATION

The Claymont Society is pleased to announce an upcoming five day retreat at Claymont entitled “The Mindful Enneagram: Balancing the Three Centers through Meditation, Movements, and the Enneagram.” The retreat will occur June 4-8, 2025.
 
Gurdjieff, taught that humans are asleep based on a fundamental imbalance between three centers: moving, feeling, and intellectual.  In In Search of the Miraculous, he describes 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 in a balanced, harmonious way.  
 
Although Gurdjieff never used the Enneagram as a typology, over the past fifty years the Enneagram has become widely used as a useful map of nine basic ways this fundamental imbalance of the three centers occurs and suggests specific paths to spiritual development through awakening and balancing the centers based on our particular type of imbalance.   
 
This retreat will use the Movements, practical work, Vipassana based mindfulness meditation, and the Typology 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 asleep to our deeper potential.  The aim of the retreat is to begin to actually observe and experience our particular type of imbalance of centers, how to awaken from it, and how to live in greater balance and harmony of the Three Centers. 
 
This retreat begins with dinner at 6:30 PM on Wednesday June 4th, and ends after lunch at noon on Sunday June 8th, 2025.
Jul
10
Thu
2025
Work Weekend – A Cosmological Sensation @ Claymont Court Great Barn
Jul 10 @ 6:30 pm – Jul 13 @ 2:00 pm
Work Weekend - A Cosmological Sensation @ Claymont Court Great Barn

Download the flyer

Work Weekend with Lee van Laer

July 10-13, 2025

A Cosmological Sensation

When Gurdjieff wrote Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, he mentioned the words cosmos and cosmic 750 times, give or take, in the 1140 pages of the book.  Mr. Gurdjieff was, it’s clear enough, bent on reminding us that we live in a cosmos; and that we’ve lost touch with our cosmological nature. He speaks of a lost world where mankind was able to see more colors than we do now; to hear more tones than we do; to sense the emanations of the sun, moon, and planets—and even the sorrow of God Himself.

How do I live within this cosmology which Gurdjieff presents? It’s in the book, but not of the book.

Here are some of the questions we’ll explore from a practical point of view through guided meditation, discussions, and community activity.

  • What are Spiritual molecules? Can one re-align one’s molecular Being? If so, how?
  • How can I form an inner relationship that has enough strength to maintain a right attitude regardless of external conditions?
  • I live in the disordinary: a wrongly ordered state. Yet somewhere in me is an inner voice that speaks softly, perhaps even wordlessly, through my sensation of Being. It tells me the cosmos has a right order. And I’m thirsty for that. I’m searching for it. In the midst of all this confusion, how do I say yes, and bring the good? Where is my center of gravity?

Attendees are also encouraged to bring their own questions for all of us to explore.

The weekend will be led by Lee van Laer.  Lee is a long-time member of the New York Gurdjieff Foundation, a group leader, an editor at Parabola Magazine, an author, a podcaster, a musician and an artist.  His website is https://zenyogagurdjieff.substack.com

Movements will also be offered as part of the weekend.

The weekend will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday July 10 and end after lunch on Sunday July 13.   All activities will be at the Great Barn.

Suggested donation for the weekend is $350 if you are staying overnight at Claymont, and $210 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 and to register please contact, the registrar, Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.

Aug
2
Sat
2025
Register – Fourth Way Course of Study @ Claymont Court
Aug 2 – Nov 16 all-day
Register - Fourth Way Course of Study @ Claymont Court

Click for:  APPLICATION    |    PROSPECTUS

The Claymont Society is offering a 15 week Course of Study in The Fourth Way tradition. This is open to anyone who feels a need and wish to go deeper in their spiritual search and practice.

The Course will be conducted both in person and online. It will focus on the teachings and practices of G. I. Gurdjieff and J.G. Bennett, offered by people who studied with Bennett at Sherborne, with Pierre Elliot at Claymont, as well as other prominent spiritual teachers.

This will begin with an on-site program August 2nd-10th and conclude with a second on-site program November 9th-16th with regular on-line group activities in between.