Binding An Ant

And some reviews of Trust and Forgive: The Medicine of Your Life

Aug 23, 2024

∙ Paid

I’m happy to say that my new book, Trust and Forgive: The Medicine of Your Life, is beginning to gain some momentum in sales. I’m also getting some beautiful recommendations, a couple of which I want to share with you:

KeDar
5.0 out of 5 stars Magical Journey Into Healing
Loved this completely engrossing book! A compelling and gripping journey into healing, with lots of intriguing historical insights and colorful travel adventures. It was like being on a roller coaster yet feeling completely at peace inside. One of the most unforgettable and unique books I've ever read. Clearly the life work of a true healer and master storyteller. Highly recommend and will gift to friends!
Ben M
5.0 out of 5 stars Wisdom and Truth Distilled
Richard is an incredible person with an even more incredible story to tell. After experiencing his sound healing ceremonies for the best part of a decade, traveling to Peru with him, and soaking in his wisdom and the absolute beauty and power of the medicinal spaces he creates, this book is real integration. Recognizing snippets of life stories from his dialogues in preparation for sound ritual, the way the story is expanded and comprehensive here only deepens the reverence I have for Richard and his life's work. I cannot recommend his book and work highly enough, it is life changing stuff!

Ben Malcolm, PharmD, MPH
Spirit Pharmacist

Buy on Amazon Here

The following writing is an outtake from the book. Since I was advised to keep the book under a certain length, several chapters didn’t make it into the final copy. I’ll be sharing these with you over the following weeks. These were not professionally edited and proofread, so please excuse any minor errors.

Binding an ant - Part 1

Would it not be nice to go through life knowing you're doing your best for yourself? Knowing that just because life is the way it is, you may have to do things to get ahead that may cause damage to other people. You may even make mistakes in your judgment and reasoning, leading to actions that will hurt others. Isn’t it good to know that such errors are perfectly fine as long as you are the one who gets ahead when the scales are measured?

Is it a great and valuable skill to not feel guilt, remorse, sadness, or shame? To be perfectly OK about the harm done to others. One could sleep through the night. One could have peace. One could meet every person that you may have harmed with equanimity. You could float through the world unconcerned about the wake of damage left in your path.

Of course, you were doing your best, so any harm you caused is OK because you didn't intend harm to anyone. It all happened as a natural result of you doing what you needed to do at any given moment and in any situation to get ahead.

You are number one, and number one needs to be looked after. After all, if you are not for yourself, then who will be for you? This paraphrases Hillel the Elder, a Jewish scholar from 100 BCE! Since you cannot feel the pain of the other, is it not permissible and even good to do everything possible to obliterate your own deep inner pain, even if at the expense of others? After all, if I study this situation, I alone exist, for I alone can feel and understand my inner world.

This is a state of being known as narcissism. It is the state of not caring at all about your effect on others other than how your impact on others benefits yourself and only yourself. It is a state of being that leads to interpersonal pain caused not only by betrayals, broken agreements, and disconnection from the beautiful feelings of family and friends but also by broken hearts.

In some ways, it is so much a part of modern culture that the narcissist is nearly worshiped as they are the successful ones, the powerful ones, those who live the rarified life of royalty. They are Übermenschen - the superior ones.

One needs to look no further than any printed or online periodical to see the names and stories of those whose lives have led to an accumulation of money, material goods, and power far more than what could be spent or enjoyed by any one person. Some of these cultural “supermen” increase their wealth in a few minutes by more than what the average wage earner makes in a full year. If we take his 7 billion dollar-a-year salary and don’t consider his investment income, he earns nearly a million dollars an hour, 24/7/365.

Hillel did not intend that the first of his three famous questions, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me,” as a Complete Idiot’s Guide to a Narcissistic Way of Life. As in all great sayings that will last millennia, his statement must be looked at in greater depth. Who is the “I” and “myself” of which Hillel spoke? Certainly not the egoistic “I” that seeks only to consume and use the world and all on and in it for its own pleasure and greed.

If a narcissist reads Hillel’s three questions, they may stop after reading the first one with an enthusiastic and loud “Yes!” As they pummel their fist in the air. They might see confirmation in the saying (not that narcissists need confirmation) that they are all that exists and that everything that they do should be only to increase the wealth and power over others that “number one” deserves. They certainly would ignore the second part of Hillel the Elder’s famous quote and thus misinterpret the first part: “And being only for myself, then what am I?”

Note that in the second question, Hillel didn’t say, “Who am I?”; he said, “What am I.” I’ve always been struck by the wording “What am I.” Looked at with the eye of the heart, Hillel is perhaps clearly stating that if a person is a narcissist, they are no longer a who but a what. They become a very loud shadow of a human being.

This second phrase also puts us into the realm of the Spirit, the reality of the world of plant medicines. It hints and points to a realizable experience that no person is ever truly alone. Even deeper, it hints that there is no “other” and that your experience and mine are in some unknown and seemingly (but not) unknowable way connected. There is no “other.” This is the realm of the mystics and the highest ideals of the medicine and spiritual worlds.

Plant medicine work shows us the potential and possibility of a different world—a world where we are interconnected, a world where we are one. This world is the exact opposite of the world of the narcissist, a world that many may think is nothing but spiritual clichés and empty promises.

To a rational mind, all people appear to be separate. Even in the closest relationships, where it may seem that the lovers’ souls have fused into one soul, there is still a feeling of separation. Your body is wherever you are right now, and my body is wherever I am right now, and chances are quite good that our two bodies are far apart. So it seems that the distance between us makes separation real. By every objective measurement, we are separate beings with little to no effect on each other unless circumstances allow for such an effect via some aspect of physical proximity.

In this separation, what happens on one side of the world has little effect on what happens on the other side of the world. It's a big place, this world. Every home is a castle, and every person is their own sovereign, free to do whatever they want (within the law of the land) to extract and enjoy as much happiness as possible.

We know that this philosophy and action are unsustainable and untrue. It is the philosophy that has driven humans to seek to colonize Mars. At the same time, we continue the habits and narcissistic tendencies that have taken us to the brink of destroying this beautiful Earth, our only true home.

Imagine the joy of essentially living twenty-four hours a day in a Martian mega-mall, for that is how most of life on Mars will be if we ever colonize that or any other planet in our solar system. A sealed environment without an iota of wild nature. Never to see a river, a lake, or a waterfall. Never to smell the sweetness of the perfumes coming off of the wildflowers touched by the morning dew. Never to sit by the ocean and merge mind and heart into a perfect sunrise or sunset accompanied by the sounds of the waves crashing and the beautiful smell of salt-tinged air.

I believe that the human spirit in such an environment would crumble. It would crumble for lack of a breath of real air, for the feel of sunlight on bare skin, for the smell of the first moments of a storm in a soft spring breeze. It would crumble for lack of the sounds of birds in the trees or the feel of a waterfall misting one’s face.

(Part 2 next week)

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