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

Lead by Deborah Rose Longo and Rob Creekmore

June 4 – 8, 2025

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Work Weekend with Lee van Laer

July 10-13, 2025

A Cosmological Sensation

Join us for a work weekend led by Lee van Laer. 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.

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We are pleased to host this opportunity to work together with Roger Lipsey. In addition to inner exercises and practices in the rural atmosphere of Claymont, there will be an opportunity to work along with others of long experience in the practical application of ideas and values brought to the West by G. I. Gurdjieff.

Roger invites us to “create a study circle on Saturday, September 20th, to explore together the values of the teaching. The form is simple, potentially demanding: form teams of three or four study partners in August if not earlier, choose a focus for study and exchange, and bring your findings and questions to the whole gathering for shared discussion. As Mr. Gurdjieff said about meeting at his apartment in Paris, ‘Here there are no spectators.’In that spirit, be sure to find teammates and engage.”

Where to look in the Gurdjieff literature? In Beelzebub: the Sphinx, Belcultassi and those he drew close to him, Ashiata Shiemash and so much in those four chapters, the passages on the hasnamuss in the Greek and Roman chapter—and so very much else, scattered like peradams throughout the book. Elsewhere, especially in Views from the Real World, a team could choose aphorisms to explore and offer to the rest of us. There is also a wealth of material in that book about values. Look also in the reflections of Mr. Bennett, in In Search, in the Paris meetings

1943 and ‘44–and naturally look also at your own experience. Can we make this a research project through which we educate ourselves about the values of the teaching? Roger’s talk at the Harvard Gurdjieff conference last December shows some of the topics with which you might engage. You’ll find the text at  https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications/gurdjieff/eighteenth-commandment-lipsey

Roger Lipsey is a trustee of the New York Gurdjieff Foundation. He served for many years on the board of Parabola, and his many books include Gurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy; Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down: The Long Encounter of Thomas Merton and His Abbot, James Fox; and others. For more information about his books, visit https://www.rogerlipsey.net.

“What has long been needed is a good translator, someone who can bridge these gaps with more patience than Gurdjieff himself and more subtlety than those who meet his teaching only from the usual intellectual and cultural reference points. In both of these respects, Roger Lipsey is supremely the man for the job… Tremendously literate, with a sweeping breadth of knowledge of the Western intellectual tradition , he is also a longtime student of the Work – now one of its respected elders – and his long years of laboring in this vineyard will be immediately apparent, to those who know the Work, through the signature fragrance of his presentation.”Cynthia Bourgeault, in her introduction to Gurdjieff Reconsidered. The weekend will begin with dinner at 6:30 pm on Friday September 19 and end after lunch on Sunday September 21. All activities will be at the Great Barn.

Suggested donation for the weekend is $250 if you are staying overnight at Claymont, and $170 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 email, the registrar, Amy Silver at Claymontgathering@hotmail.com Further information and Updates will be posted on society.claymont.org