The Art of Connection
A series of lectures about things that really matter!
We must remember that a myth is a living entity and exists within every person. You will get the true living form of the myth if you can see it as it spins away inside of yourself. The most rewarding mythological experience you can have is to see how it lives inside your own psychological structure.
— Robert A. Johnson
Dates: Once a month from 25 August 2025 - 27 April 2026
Duration: 8 sessions
Time: 5.30pm - 7.30pm (centre will be open from 5pm, so please arrive a few minutes early).
Format: In-person
Location: Abiding Heart Centre, Castle Douglas, Scotland
Fee: Suggested donation £10 per session
Description:
The Art of Connection is an exploration of themes rooted in contemplative philosophy, ancient wisdom, mythology, history, and a sense of place. Key philosophical principles are introduced and deepened through discussion, reflection, meditation, poetry, and storytelling. Some of the themes chosen in this series offer us the opportunity to contemplate the challenges of today through the lens of history and mythology. These are interactive, stimulating, and thought-provoking sessions.
The emphasis is on the integration and internalisation of these living philosophical insights so that they become part of our ongoing growth and the flourishing of our whole being.
The lectures have an element of adventure, as we weave stories from around the world, journeying to ancient kingdoms in the Levant, Iraq, Syria, Persia, India, the Himalayas, Mongolia, Greece, France, and Germany.
Lectures Themes and Dates:
25 August 2025
Grief, Mortality and Becoming Whole:
Lessons from the Epic of Gilgamesh
This lecture explores The Epic of Gilgamesh which originates in Ancient Mesopotamia, located in present-day Iraq and parts of Syria. It is the oldest and one of the earliest and most profound meditations on death, loss, and the human condition. At the heart of this epic lies the transformation of Gilgamesh—from a powerful but arrogant king to a grieving, humbled seeker—following the death of his closest companion, Enkidu. As we journey alongside Gilgamesh—from deep friendship through the raw terrain of grief to the ultimate confrontation with mortality—we reflect on our own experiences of loss and the process of becoming whole again.
Through storytelling and guided reflection, we explore the core existential themes of the epic: the awakening of the heart through friendship, the destabilising force of grief, the denial of death through the pursuit of immortality, and the return home as a more integrated self.
Participants are invited to see Gilgamesh not just as an ancient myth, but as a mirror of the inner human journey. This lecture lays the foundation for the experiential practices—meditation, creative expression, and embodied inquiry—designed to deepen emotional awareness, insight, and our capacity to live fully in the face of impermanence.
29 September 2025
Dependent Origination and Human Interconnection
More than 2,000 years ago in Ancient India, Shakyamuni Buddha—also known as Siddhartha Gautama taught the principle of Dependent Origination . This profound insight reveals that all phenomena arise in dependence upon other phenomena. According to this teaching, nothing exists independently; everything comes into being due to specific causes and conditions. Dependent Origination applies not only to the natural world but also to human experience, including the arising of suffering and the path to its cessation. Understanding this interdependence transforms how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world. It invites humility, responsibility, and compassion.
To illuminate this perspective, we will interweave into this lecture stories from The Travels of Marco Polo—his extraordinary journey along the Silk Road and his time serving the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. Marco Polo’s experiences offer a vivid example of the interdependence of cultures, economies, and knowledge across continents.
The Silk Road was not only a route for goods—it also carried ideas, technologies, and spiritual traditions. Marco Polo witnessed Buddhist temples, Islamic courts, Christian churches, and Confucian customs, all coexisting under the Mongol Empire. The Travels of Marco Polo influenced cartographers, merchants, and explorers, and planted seeds of the Age of Exploration, linking past interconnections to future ones, shaping the world we live in today, with all its complexity. His journey reminds us that no society develops in isolation—we change through contact and interaction. The story of his life illustrates how interconnected our world has always been, and how human experience, like all phenomena, arises in relation to others. The interdependence between Asia and Europe along these ancient routes shows that our shared history is built on countless moments of connection, exchange, change, and co-arising.
27 October 2025
What is Reality?
The Wheel of Life, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and Milarepa’s Journey to Freedom
The Wheel of Life is a symbolic map from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions that reveals how we experience existence as a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It shows how we are often trapped in patterns of suffering because we mistake impermanent, interconnected phenomena for lasting, independent realities. The Buddha encouraged followers to paint this wheel on temple walls to help people see the nature of suffering and the possibility of liberation through clear understanding.
Journeying westward in time and place, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from Ancient Greece offers another profound metaphor for reality. Prisoners chained in darkness mistake shadows on the cave wall for the whole of existence. When one escapes into the light, he sees the truth but faces resistance upon returning. This story illustrates how our perceptions can be limited and conditioned, and how awakening demands courage to question what we take as real.
Turning to the Himalayas, the story of Milarepa, Tibet’s great yogi, brings these themes into personal and spiritual life. Milarepa’s journey from a vengeful sorcerer to an enlightened master exemplifies the possibility of breaking free from destructive cycles—akin to escaping the Wheel of Life—and moving out of the cave of ignorance into the light of wisdom. Through intense meditation and perseverance, he transformed suffering into insight, teaching that true freedom arises from confronting and understanding our inner illusions.
Together, these teachings and stories invite us to examine the reality we live in—challenging illusions, conditioned patterns, and suffering—and to awaken to a deeper, interconnected truth. They show that freedom and clarity come not from clinging to appearances but from seeing beyond them with wisdom, compassion, and awareness.
24 November 2025
The Flute’s Song: The Heart’s Yearning to Return
The 13th-century Persian Sufi poet Rumi begins his great work, the Masnavi, with the haunting image of a reed flute, crying out in sorrow. Torn from the reed bed, the flute sings a song of longing—a yearning to return to where it once belonged. For Rumi, this is the story of the human heart. We were once part of something whole, something greater. Our ache for connection—for belonging—is not a flaw, but a sacred memory. Like the reed, our yearning is a sign: that we are wired for connection.
Why do we long to connect? From birth, we reach out—not just for food, but for touch, warmth, and connection. Like the reed flute, cut from the reed bed and crying out in sorrow, our heart carries a deep ache, a yearning to connect or return to where it once belonged. This pain and desire echo the flute’s song—a sacred call reminding us that we are a unified whole.
In this lecture, we explore the complex nature of attachment—a bond woven into the roots of our being and wellbeing and the human yearning to return back to wholeness. While healthy attachment in childhood is essential for our social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development, adulthood invites us to transmute the more constricted forms of attachment. We are called to move beyond the needy, fear of loss driven love, and open instead to a love that is spacious, unconditional, and luminous by its very nature. Like Rumi’s reed flute, our heart’s longing reveals the wish to come back home to who we truly are.
26 January 2026
Seeing and Being Seen: Presence as a gift
In a world full of noise, distractions, and surface interactions, the simple act of being fully present—with ourselves, with others—is increasingly rare. We scroll, we speak, we respond—but how often do we truly see each other? How often do we feel seen?
And yet, presence is one of the deepest human needs: to see, and to truly be seen. Not as a function, or a role, or a projection—but as we are, in our fullness. Presence says: I am here. I see you. You matter.
In The Little Prince, a 1943 novella by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, there is a moment that beautifully captures the essence of human connection. The little prince meets a fox who asks to be tamed—not to be controlled, but to form a relationship, to become truly known. Through quiet ritual and shared attention, a bond gradually forms. When the time comes to say goodbye, the fox offers the prince a parting secret:
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
This line is more than poetic. It’s a call to presence. In the story, the prince had looked at many roses, all identical to his eye—but only his rose, the one he had cared for and spent time with, became unique. It’s through presence that things—and people—become real to us.
In a distracted world, presence is a kind of resistance. It’s an offering. When we slow down enough to see with the heart—to be present without agenda—we create space for transformation, trust, and healing.
To be seen in this way is a gift. To see others in this way is a responsibility.
23 February 2026
The First Connection: Coming home to ourselves and understanding our inner dialogue
Every moment of every day, there is a conversation unfolding within us. It’s quiet, constant, and incredibly powerful. This is our inner dialogue—the way we speak to ourselves when no one else is listening.
Before we can truly connect with others—before we can see, love, or be present for another—we must first come home to ourselves. And yet, for many of us, home feels far away. We live in our heads, trapped in doing, striving, comparing. Our inner world often feels more like a battleground than a sanctuary. But what if the first, most essential connection isn’t with someone “out there,” but with the voice inside us?
This journey inward—the journey home—is not a modern invention. It's as old as story itself.
In the Ancient Greek myth of Psyche and Eros, Psyche is thrust into a world of uncertainty. She loses her connection to love not because of cruelty or fate, but because of fear, doubt, and the quiet voice within her that said, You’re not enough. You must know more. You must control this. Her trials were not punishments, but invitations to grow—not outwardly, but inwardly. She was asked to complete impossible tasks: sorting seeds, fetching sacred water, facing the underworld. And yet, each challenge mirrored an inner one: learning patience, trust, discernment.
Psyche’s name means soul. Her story reminds us that the soul’s greatest journey isn’t toward another—it’s back to itself. Like Psyche, we all must pause and ask: What is the voice inside me saying? Is it kind? Is it true? Is it mine?
Coming home to ourselves starts here—with attention, with compassion, and with the willingness to listen deeply to our inner dialogue. Because before we can love, we must first return.
30 March 2026
Parcival and Knowing when to Ask the Question
The Epic of Parcival is a13th-century epic poem from Germany revolving around personal growth, the nature of spiritual awakening, and the moral maturity required to break cycles of suffering—especially the idea of knowing when to ask the question. Parcival (or Parzival) is a naive young knight who stumbles upon the mysterious Grail Castle, where he witnesses the wounded Fisher King suffering in silence. During a magical ceremony involving the Holy Grail, Parcival feels deeply curious about what he sees—but he does not ask the essential question: "Whom does the Grail serve? or What ails thee, uncle?" Because he withholds the question (taught earlier that knights should not ask too many questions), the Fisher King's suffering continues, and Parcival is cast out, beginning years of wandering and inner struggle.
The question in the Grail legend is more than literal—it represents compassion, responsibility, and higher insight. Asking it at the right time would have healed the Fisher King and restored the wounded land. In contemplative terms, Parcival's journey mirrors the path of becoming whole. This epic isn’t just a knight’s tale—it’s a metaphor for all of us. His journey teaches us that silence can be damaging if it stems from fear rather than wisdom, and that asking the right question—when we’re truly ready—can be the act that heals the world.
27 April 2026
Grace in the Ruins: Stories of Betrayal and Becoming
Betrayal can be one of the most devastating human experiences. It ruptures trust, fractures belonging, and often leaves us feeling homeless — not just in the world, but within ourselves. And yet, within this pain lies a possibility: betrayal, loss, and exile can become gateways to profound inner growth, awakening paths of healing, insight, resilience, and transformation.
This lecture explores these universal themes through both historical and symbolic narratives.
In this lecture we turn our attention to Scotland, to Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary, a woman of deep faith whose life was marked by betrayal at every turn — by husbands, political allies, and even her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. Her fall from power, years of imprisonment, and eventual execution form a story of profound suffering and dislocation. While we cannot say with certainty whether Mary transmuted her ordeal into spiritual awakening, her unwavering dignity in exile suggests a powerful form of inner endurance.
In contrast, we turn to Chitta in The Story of Bodhi and Chitta. Betrayed and cast out by her brother Bodhi — who succumbs to the seductions of pride and power — Chitta does not break. She remains rooted in clarity, compassion, and self-awareness. Her exile becomes a place of stillness and insight. Bodhi’s awakening takes longer. Once he sees the truth of his actions, he seeks redemption and forgiveness. Chitta receives him not with anger, but with a simple meal — nourishment of body and spirit. She becomes a living embodiment of wisdom that transforms betrayal into healing. Bodhi, in turn, transforms pride into humility and gratitude.
Together, the stories of Mary, Chitta, and Bodhi offer three different responses to betrayal — by others and by one self. While Mary’s story may end in unresolved loss, Chitta’s journey shows what is possible when betrayal is held with consciousness and integrity. Bodhi’s path reveals the courage it takes to face one’s shadow, take responsibility, and make amends. These narratives invite us to reflect on how even the most painful ruptures can become openings into deeper resilience, compassion, and the rediscovery of a home within ourselves.
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