Spiritual Work Activities Calendar

Daily: 6:45-7:30 AM Morning Sitting

Mondays: 5 PM Practical work, often with exercise, dinner, community meeting

Wednesdays: Yoga 5:00 – 6:30 PM

Inner work meeting or Movements 7:30 – 9:00 PM

Thursdays: Sauna 8:00 PM

Friday – Sunday: Work in kitchens preparing meals for retreat participants

Sundays: Zikr 7:30 – 8:30 PM

During Summer : weekly community gardening activities

 

Spiritual Work Programs at Claymont

This program of inner work is based on the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff and his pupil, John Bennett, known as the Fourth Way. It also incorporates a few practices and ideas from other approaches, and examines Fourth Way ideas in the context of related systems. It takes place year round, with breaks lasting a couple of weeks during each season at appropriate intervals. Experienced community members commit to leading units or parts of units in the curriculum described below, either singly or in groups. There are also guest leaders from time to time.

Monday: Brief meditation, followed by practical work with a simple inner exercise and community meeting, lasting half an hour except for a long meeting once a month. Informal sharing time may be added after the meeting.

Wednesday: Group meeting, 6:30-8:45 PM, involving themes, presentation of concepts, and sharing of observations, followed by a led "morning exercise" (This term refers to a variety of meditative and contemplative practices). Three times a year, once in spring, once in summer, and once in fall, there will be a series of classes in Gurdjieff's movements lasting for eight weeks. During those times, meetings will be from 6:30 to 7:40, followed by movements until 9. Non-community members will be invited to join into these activities.

Open community weekends: Several times a year we have weekends when people come together to apply concepts learned Monday and Wednesday evenings and to do projects together on the property.

Additional activities: Currently, yoga classes are being offered on Thursday evenings. Sometimes there are other activities, such as contact dancing or work with intonation of sound as a meditation. Everyone is invited to participate in these as they are offered.

Non-residents who wish to participate can come either to Wednesday only or to both evenings. Community residents are expected to attend both Monday and Wednesday activities. New residents are expected to work with this curriculum intensively for at least their first two years, including readings and morning exercises throughout the week. People wishing to come to live at Claymont commit to this when applying. A shorter time can be allowed for people with substantial recent experience with Fourth Way group work, after which they will continue to participate in both Mondays and Wednesdays, but apply the techniques learned as feels appropriate to them for the furthering of their own work. Wednesday is for everyone, so that the whole community has a time of sharing of inner life to help in the development of a common bond and way of working, and so that we are all working on some things simultaneously. New people will thus have exposure to the active work of more experienced members.

Everyone is expected to do a daily morning exercise, either together or individually. Those wishing to do it together can arrange a mutually convenient time.

CURRICULUM:

This is the general outline for our spiritual work curriculum. It is intended to be flexible, especially in regard to timing, but also somewhat in content, according to the needs of the situation as they arise. The program is experiential. Morning exercises and other inner practices will be taught throughout, and participants will share their observations at meetings. Appropriate readings will be selected to accompany each lesson. They are to be read individually, for the most part, rather than aloud at meetings. Participants will be expected to purchase some books. Other times there will be handouts. Morning exercises will be chosen to go with lessons when possible.

This curriculum is intended to provide participants with the necessary tools and understandings to enable them to be fully integrated parts of our community, or to continue to pursue inner work successfully on their own or in other groups. By the end of the curriculum, in addition to the obvious objectives of each unit, the following objectives should be met.

Objectives:

The participants should:

1. Have an overall understanding of the Fourth Way, particularly its spiritual psychology, as well as basic concepts and techniques useful in pursuing any spiritual path.

2. Understand how the Fourth Way relates to other paths and related approaches.

3. Know at least three movements reasonably well.

4. Understand the three centers and what they do.

5. Understand where they are going in their spiritual work, that is, have a picture of what their central aim is and how to get there.

6. Have a variety of tools at their disposal and an understanding of what they are for and when to use them, including morning exercises and a variety of ways of working inwardly while performing outward tasks or going through their day.

7. Have an understanding of what is necessary to live harmoniously in a community, including basic communication skills, conflict resolution skills, and the ability to be an active contributor in a group and community.

8. Have the ability to consider the needs of the whole, and to put the needs of the whole above personal preferences when appropriate.

Unit 1: Introduction. What is transformation? Why work for transformation? What is its ultimate aim? A brief history of Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way.

Unit 2: Steps along the spiritual path. Gurdjieff's Men numbers 1-7. Murat's chart of ascension. Hawkins' detailed description of spiritual progression. Work with self-observation. Where are we starting from? What are our next steps? Personality and essence. Conceptions of God and higher powers. Exercises with sensation. Exercises for self-remembering.

Unit 3: The three centers. What are they? How do they interact?

Unit 4: Energies: automatic, sensitive, conscious, creative, unitive. How do we experience each of these subjectively, and how do we move from lower energies to higher energies?

Unit 5: Difficulties we encounter: negative emotions, energy leaks, inner considering, habits, dualistic thinking.

Unit 6: Function, being, and will. Being: sensation, awareness of breath, centeredness, collected state. Will: Aim, alignment, master desire, visualization, how to formulate aim.

Unit 7: Affirmation, receptivity, reconciling. Active:effort, initiative; receptive: meditation and prayer; reconciling: understanding, non-duality.

Unit 8: Love, forgiveness, sacrifice, surrender, submission, service. Direct work with surrender and forgiveness. Healing exercises.

Unit 9: What are the needs of community? Community aim, conflict resolution, consideration of what it takes to make community work.

Unit 10: Time and eternity.

Projected length: Approximately 60 weeks, including 48 weeks of movements. There will be at least 16 weeks of vacation times. Because there needs to be additional time for special events, and because it may prove desirable to extend the projected time for some of the units, this program will actually take about two years.