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
Springtime is a time of new beginnings, the delicate ferocity of new life, a time for hope and renewal. We invite you to join us this April as we weave the teachings of permaculture with what it truly means to be human.
Permaculture offers a positive way for humans to exist on Earth. Its principles can help us realize and manifest our potential as a resilient, regenerative force. It’s hopeful and speaks directly to the grief and hopelessness many of us feel with the current state of the world and allows us to begin to live in reciprocity with all beings.
Much of permaculture focuses on our physical relationship to the land. At its root, though, it offers a path for falling more deeply in love with Mother Earth and through that love, realize that She loves us back and is calling us home.
During this weekend, we invite you to dive deep and, through direct revelation, experience what we can do to restore balance at this critical time on the planet. We will reclaim and remember our true selves through Earth-honoring ceremony, nature connection and prayer. We will journey both inward and outward, communing with each other and the beings around us. We will then come to understand, deep in our bones, that Earth is alive, that we are all connected, and if we slow down enough, the stones, the trees, the waters, the winds can tell us what we need to hear and learn.
It’s up to us to change the human story of separation and return to our true place of belonging. Do you hear the call? If not us, who? If not now, when?
Join us!
When: April 5-7, 2019 (begins with dinner Friday through after lunch Sunday)
Where: Claymont Society, a 340-acre spiritual retreat center, nestled in the Shenandoah Valley of WV, just 1 hour from Washington DC’s Dulles airport.
How Much: This will be a small, intimate gathering of 12-15 people. $165 for workshop fee includes 6 delicious vegan meals. Great Barn lodging $50 (2 nights), camping $20 (2 nights) = Total from $185-$215. Hold your space with $50 deposit or pay in full here: https://spiritualpermaculture.brownpapertickets.com/
Food: Delicious vegan food will be prepared by the amazing chef, Vanessa Elaine Collins, with the majority of the ingredients sourced from the Claymont Property, Young Harvests, and other local vendors. Yum!!!
Who: Bill Pfeiffer aka «Sky Otter» is the founder of Sacred Earth Network (SEN) which continues to implement leading edge visions for over 25 years. In that time, Bill has made Russia a second home having traveled there 44 times assisting the environmental and indigenous movements through SEN. This has given him a rare cross-cultural perspective. He has also led hundreds of spiritual ecology workshops, including men’s and breath work. He has 25 years of experience in Re-evaluation Counseling and Vipassana meditation, and has undergone extensive training with Siberian shamans. Bill has partnered with and designed experiential workshops with Joanna Macy, John Perkins, Llyn Roberts, Cathy Pedevillano, and John Seed. He has also spent much time in the US Southwest learning about Native medicine ways and the crucial importance of the petroglyphs and pictographs. His book, Wild Earth, Wild Soul: A Manual for an Ecstatic Culture has been met with high acclaim.
Kit McGinnis is an embodied storyteller who loves to dance and commune with all beings. She has lived in intentional community for nearly 20 years and has been immersed in spiritual life, through meditation, movement, inquiry and nature connection for just as long. She has been happily married for 18 years and has two teenagers. She is a founding member of the Permaculture Center at Claymont and is currently apprenticing in ALisa Starkweather’s Priestess Path Program, A Woman’s Mystery School. She leads monthly full moon labyrinth walks and has a deep understanding of what it means to witness and be witnessed through two decades of practice in her Authentic Movement women’s circle. She knows Bill Pfeiffer through her participation is his Vision Quest and 10-day Wild Earth Intensive, and through his ongoing friendship and mentorship.
Some of the weekend’s activities:
Ceremony and Ritual for setting intention and honoring the elements and ancestors
Nature connection through Awe Walks and Saunters
Oak Wisdom
Shamanic Journeying
Fire circles
Storytelling
Dancing and deep body listening
Poetry
Joy
Song
Movements of the Soul
Movements of the Soul follows on from the previous DuVersity event at Claymont, The Language of Gesture – with a major new element engaging us in the making of sacred images through movement. This requires us to realize we are bodily because it is through this that there can be real acts of worship. Word, breath and movement can combine and fuse to lose their partiality as, according to Gurdjieff, thinking, feeling and sensing can coalesce into a new body of individuality.
In a DuVersity event, we strive to merge diverse elements and avoid ideological bias and conditioning, in an open-ended participative performance. The way of understanding utilizes knowledge and experience but is not confined to them. We may come to see how gesture can give concrete form to our will, bridging worlds.
Seminar presenters will include Anthony Blake, Molly Forde, Bhati Diaz and Jesai Jayhmes
Dates: May 9-12, 2019. The seminar will begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end with lunch on Sunday.
Location: The Claymont Society for Continuous Education, Charles Town, WV 25414
Cost – The cost of the event including lodging is $450 if paid by March 15, 2019 and $495 after March 15, 2019.
For more information and to register:
Please contact Matt Zenkowich – zenkm1428@gmail.com
Registration and Payment Instructions Event Flyer
2019 MID-ATLANTIC PERMACULTURE CONVERGENCE:
Cultivating Self-Reliance in 2019
JUNE 28-30, 2019
The Mid-Atlantic Permaculture Convergence is a two-day festival celebrating land-based living and self-reliance. Over 20 local teachers, experts, and gurus will teach crucial skills related to food, energy, water, health, building, and community self- reliance. Come one, come all; only we can build the world we deserve.
Find out more and purchase tickets on the website:
https://www.midatlanticpermaculture.com/
Claymont Society for Continuous Education Summer Seminar
July 18-21, 2019
Living in Unity
The experience of unity resounds at every stage of the spiritual path. With body awareness and sensation, unity comes in the form of wholeness. Various practices engaging our attention unify that core of who we are. Consciousness opens us to the unity of the seamless, boundless, silent awareness that includes everything in our immediate experience. The inclusion of all that we are opens us to presence, unified in our I. Entering the sacred realms, we enter the one, boundless and all-pervasive light. Love springs as the essence of the global unity that embraces all, including us. The ultimate unity of the divine will that creates and sustains this wondrous universe touches our very core, without intermediary. And throughout our way, sharing the path with our spiritual sisters and brothers opens us to the unity in community.
In this seminar, we will engage in spiritual practices that support us in moving toward the experience of unity in all its forms. With the remarkably effective inner exercises, meditations, and Gurdjieff movements of the Fourth Way, in addition to practices adapted from other traditions, we will pursue the deepening of our spiritual life.
Can we live our daily life in unity?
The seminar will be facilitated by Joseph Naft. He is the author of www.innerfrontier.org and of six books, most recently The Way of Presence: Tools and Strategies. He studied with John Bennett at Sherborne, England in 1974.
The seminar will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Thursday July 18 and end after lunch on Sunday July 21. All activities will be at the Barn.
You are cordially invited to join us in our work and exploration.
Suggested donation for the weekend is $225 if you are staying overnight at Claymont and $135 if you are not staying overnight. However, do not let the cost prevent you from coming, financial assistance is available.
For more information and to register please contact the registrar, Amy Silver, at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com.
A Six-Day Fourth Way and Mevlevi Immersion
A Confluence of Grace and Effort
304-876-9268
UPDATE:
In an effort to make the Higher Moving Center seminar at Claymont as affordable as possible, we are rolling back the fee to what was charged last year – $450 if paid before March 31 and $495 afterward. As you might imagine, DuVersity barely breaks even on these seminars, but we think it is important to keep the fees as low as possible for people. Please sign up before March 31 for the lower fee.
Here is a link to a short video of Anthony Blake talking about the seminar:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfp5k0iy65x4elc/HMCvideo.mp4?dl=0
This is the third in a series of seminars devoted to exploring the movements and potential of the moving centre as indicated by Gurdjieff.
Download PDF Version of this Event Info
Movements explore the ‘hidden depths’ of the body and the pivotal role of action in realising who we are. The primary thing in this is movement and not consciousness (which is a secondary phenomenon). We will use Gurdjieff movements to reflect the inner reality to us.
In this event we will take as a centre of gravity the Gurdjieff movement known as The Great Prayer. Various dimensions will come into play, including aspects of sensation and feeling elicited by the methods of Moshe Feldenkrais as well as a understanding of the gestural language it manifests as a manifestation of death and resurrection.
Work on movements will be bracketed by music, poetry, art, visualisation, virtual reality and even algebra. We will begin with the movement of babies and may end with our prayers and the discovery of ourselves on the world stage. A great deal depends on our imagination!
Many contributors will be involved. Here is the line up as it stands now in January (it may evolve further).
Curt Golden: Guitarist. Senior member of Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft
Lavinia Plonka: Feldenkrais instructor and movements teacher
Molly Forde: Pianist and movements teacher
Darlene Franz: Classical oboist and pianist
Steven Rhodes: Researcher in the spontaneous development of movement in babies
Mattias Ribbing: Grandmaster of memory
Jason Joslyn: Developer of Virtual Reality systems
Michael White: Travelogue writer and poet
Leslie Schwing: Artist
Travis Jarrell: Dancer
Anthony Blake: Philosopher and writer. Head of research for the DuVersity
This is a participatory seminar based on Gurdjieff’s principle of the harmonious development of the Thinking, Feeling and Moving centres. Gurdjieff spoke of higher centres of thinking and feeling and we seek to complete the trinity. This is supported by the belief that over the last few thousand years, the felt centre of gravity of intelligence was first intellectual and then in the heart but, in our time, it is moving into the body. What the ‘body’ really is, is mysterious. It may be the closest thing to will.
Dates: May 7-10, 2020. The seminar will begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end with lunch on Sunday.
Location: The Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Charles Town, WV 25414
(See www.society.claymont.org for more information about the Claymont Society)
The cost of the event including lodging and meals is $545. ($495 if registered and paid before March 15, 2020.)
All events will be at the Historic Claymont Mansion
For more information and to register:
Please contact Matt Zenkowich – mattzenkowich@gmail.com
UPDATE:
In an effort to make the Higher Moving Center seminar at Claymont as affordable as possible, we are rolling back the fee to what was charged last year – $450 if paid before March 31 and $495 afterward. As you might imagine, DuVersity barely breaks even on these seminars, but we think it is important to keep the fees as low as possible for people. Please sign up before March 31 for the lower fee.
Here is a link to a short video of Anthony Blake talking about the seminar:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfp5k0iy65x4elc/HMCvideo.mp4?dl=0
This is the third in a series of seminars devoted to exploring the movements and potential of the moving centre as indicated by Gurdjieff.
Download PDF Version of this Event Info
Movements explore the ‘hidden depths’ of the body and the pivotal role of action in realising who we are. The primary thing in this is movement and not consciousness (which is a secondary phenomenon). We will use Gurdjieff movements to reflect the inner reality to us.
In this event we will take as a centre of gravity the Gurdjieff movement known as The Great Prayer. Various dimensions will come into play, including aspects of sensation and feeling elicited by the methods of Moshe Feldenkrais as well as a understanding of the gestural language it manifests as a manifestation of death and resurrection.
Work on movements will be bracketed by music, poetry, art, visualisation, virtual reality and even algebra. We will begin with the movement of babies and may end with our prayers and the discovery of ourselves on the world stage. A great deal depends on our imagination!
Many contributors will be involved. Here is the line up as it stands now in January (it may evolve further).
Curt Golden: Guitarist. Senior member of Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft
Lavinia Plonka: Feldenkrais instructor and movements teacher
Molly Forde: Pianist and movements teacher
Darlene Franz: Classical oboist and pianist
Steven Rhodes: Researcher in the spontaneous development of movement in babies
Mattias Ribbing: Grandmaster of memory
Jason Joslyn: Developer of Virtual Reality systems
Michael White: Travelogue writer and poet
Leslie Schwing: Artist
Travis Jarrell: Dancer
Anthony Blake: Philosopher and writer. Head of research for the DuVersity
This is a participatory seminar based on Gurdjieff’s principle of the harmonious development of the Thinking, Feeling and Moving centres. Gurdjieff spoke of higher centres of thinking and feeling and we seek to complete the trinity. This is supported by the belief that over the last few thousand years, the felt centre of gravity of intelligence was first intellectual and then in the heart but, in our time, it is moving into the body. What the ‘body’ really is, is mysterious. It may be the closest thing to will.
Dates: May 7-10, 2020. The seminar will begin with dinner on Thursday evening and end with lunch on Sunday.
Location: The Claymont Society for Continuous Education
Charles Town, WV 25414
(See www.society.claymont.org for more information about the Claymont Society)
The cost of the event including lodging and meals is $545. ($495 if registered and paid before March 15, 2020.)
All events will be at the Historic Claymont Mansion
For more information and to register:
Please contact Matt Zenkowich – mattzenkowich@gmail.com
Claymont Society for Continuous Education Presents
the Gurdjieff Movements Gathering June 11-18, 2021
“The purpose of Movements—the search to become conscious, to have a conscious relationship with one’s body and sensation of one’s body—gives to those who perform them sincerely and accurately a kind of ‘education’ and ‘enrichment’ of being, a food for all parts of themselves; the instinctive body, the emotional centre, conscious thought.” –Solange Claustres, Becoming Conscious
The Claymont Society is sponsoring a Movements Gathering. The event begins with dinner on Friday June 11 and ends with brunch on June 18 with six days of movements. Movements will be taught by Deborah Rose Longo and other guest teachers. Our wonderful pianist, Melanie Monsour, will be playing for the classes.
Part time participation is offered from June 11 to June 14.
Fees for attending are: $525 for 8 days of room and board $400 for tuition Total – $925 for the full event
For more information and to register please contact, the registrar, Amy Silver at claymontgathering@hotmail.com
Summer Seminar 2022: Making Space for Grace
“When I know, I cannot speak.
When I can speak, I do not know”.
Rumi
Words used intentionally are indispensable. Automatic words – whether spoken, thought or even read – waste energy that might otherwise be used for our transformation. Mahesh Maharshi said we could judge our spiritual development by the degree to which we can stop our thoughts. So how developed are we? And Saint Augustine observed that before God can fill my cup, I must first empty it. How can we make such space? And especially how can we hold inner space open in life?
The more essence is part of our awareness, the fewer automatic words. We see this with practices we know such as relaxing and filling as preparation for morning exercise. Zikr can also interrupt formatory apparatus and bring positive emotion into awareness. Such activities can help bring essence into awareness, but can we live in a way that holds and enhances that awareness? Let’s try.
In memory of Bob Brown who spoke often of making space
The seminar will be led by Hardy Mason. Hardy is a Mevlevi Sufi sheik and long-time student of the Fourth Way.
Practices to include zikr, Movements, practical work outside (weather permitting), turning, and adab (if the group seems ready). In addition, the aim of conscious food preparation and preparation of the dining room in service to all who attend.
Ground Rules: No electronic devices. In case of true emergencies, a telephone number will be provided where calls can be directed. Intentional talking only, with a practical purpose and while sensing. The next activity after each meal will begin after the kitchen bashi says the kitchen and dining room are in good order.
The seminar will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Wednesday July 13 and end after lunch on Sunday July 17. Suggested donation for the event is $340 if you are staying at Claymont, and $220 if staying off-site. However, do not let cost prevent you from attending as financial assistance is available.
For more information, and to register, please contact Amy Silver, Registrar, at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com
