“Your inner self is indeed ready to be realized
and enjoyed. Do not allow the habitual patterns of your reactions and thinking
to thwart that process. Take your thinking and reacting into your own hands,
as it were, and choose to think and react differently, whenever you are
tempted to fall back into the old track. Then indeed you begin to open the
gateways to your source of all life and of all joy.”
—Guide Session for the Washington Group, October 26, 1975, Pathwork
Additional Material Number 3
Center
Building
A Spiritual Education and Retreat Center
Sevenoaks is a spiritual education and retreat center
dedicated to teaching the Pathwork® and
to offering a safe and beautiful setting to other compatible groups to rent
for their own activities. The property is nestled in the foothills of Virginia's
Blue Ridge Mountains and provides a tranquil haven for those who wish to
learn about themselves and deepen their union with God.
Founded
by Donovan and Susan
Thesenga, Sevenoaks is owned by the Mid-Atlantic Pathwork, Inc., and
has been a non-profit Pathwork Center since 1976. Its history
commences with its beginnings as an abandoned, eroded 130-acre cattle farm,
and its transformation over the years into a full-service retreat and conference
center with modern facilities and beautiful, well-kept grounds. Many of
our guests report feeling a sense of peace from the moment they enter our
driveway, which winds through the woods for almost a mile before arriving
in our main campus area. Spacious lawns and colorful flowerbeds, surrounding
a compound of natural-wood guest buildings, greet arrivals to our Center.
The high point of our property is a hill crowned with a grove of 300-hundred
year old oak trees, with sweeping views of neighboring farms backed by the
mysterious, rolling Blue Ridge Mountains. A short walk through a pine forest
leads to a spring-fed swimming pond and up the next hill to a medicine wheel.
A longer hike wends its way through hardwood forest down to a large open
meadow bordering the Rapidan River, which flows vigorously down from the
nearby mountains.
Sevenoaks
has long been known as a Center that teaches the deeply transformative Pathwork
process of personal and spiritual growth, and sponsors a year-round schedule
of Pathwork programs. We also offer our facilities to many others, from
church gatherings to yoga classes to meditation groups, who rent our Center
to put on their own programs. We have a professional, spiritually aware
staff that takes pride in being of service to the awakening process, and
our land offers its own healing energy to those who come.
So, whether you are a spiritual seeker who wishes to take a powerful new
step in your journey, or part of a group that wants to do their work in
a deeply transformative setting, we invite you to come and join the Sevenoaks
adventure!