
Swimming in the Sacred
Wisdom from the Psychedelic Underground
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Narrated by:
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Kathleen Li
WISDOM FROM THE WOMEN HEALERS OF THE PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND
The use of entheogens, or psychedelics, is out of the closet today. LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and other medicines once associated only with the counterculture are now being legally studied for their healing properties. But as Rachel Harris shows, the underground use and study of psychedelics by women dates back to the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece.
Harris interviews the modern women elders carrying on this tradition to gather their hard-won wisdom of experience. Any listener interested in inspiration, healing, and enlightenment will find here a wonder-filled narrative packed with provocative and perhaps life-changing insight.
©2023 Rachel Harris (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















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I have to agree, though, with several other reviewers that the reading doesn’t quite do the work justice. The narrator has a pleasant and clear voice, but there is something about her inflection or emphasis or timing that feels a little bit like AI. The listener keeps being reminded that it is not the author reading the book, which makes it a bit more difficult to connect with the material.
Great Subject Matter
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The only problem is that the reader sounds like a robot at every speed. That ruined it for me.
Incredible research and inspiration
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Interesting Book on Psychedelic Therapy
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Untouched terrain
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The emphasis that the narrator chooses with her voice over and over again subtly shifts the meaning of the writer's intent.
This, for me, is the definition of a poor narration performance, as the performer tends to repaint the scenes through their own narrative lens and this does not appear to be the intent of the writer through their written words.
A very distracted and poor narrative interpretation overall; a more neutral performer would have been much better if the intent of this audiobook is to convey the writer's message.
Poor narration, slightly less poor writing.
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Not interesting.
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Sexist author
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I want to hear the stories of these powerful women without the frame of why they are Messiahs and everybody else is Satan. The problem with this frame is that it is agenda driven and the constant presence of that agenda is a warning flag that the author is attached to an outcome that may override the goal of communicating honestly, transparently, and objectively.
Having personally grown up with the apprenticeship model, and knowing, from first hand experience, the authoritarian abuses that are systemic in that model due to the lack of accountability, it was hard to see it being held up as the gold standard of training. There is no governing body that you can appeal to when patriarchal norms are espoused, when gender inequities are embraced and when grooming and unwanted sexual attention is taking place, for example. Teaching styles that are authoritarian, morally heavy handed, that focus on isolation, suffering and deprivation, and that glorify subjugation and domination are a big red flag for me personally. The fact that they are indigenous and not Christian or military does not rescue it for me. It is exactly in this sort of isolation that the worst atrocities are allowed to fester without remedy.
I was astonished that the woman who is being guided by mushrooms was described as somebody with nobody to guide her - which immediately discredited the idea being promoted - that the plants are spirits. If the plants can be spirit guides, why are they not recognized as being mentors? Why suggest this idea and then immediately discredit the personhood of the plant spirits?
The author seems to carry wounds from the scientific / medical community. These burdened parts are allowed to spew disparagement using an extremely broad and generalized brush. Perhaps some shadow work could have been done prior to publishing?
I grew up in Wisconsin and have been eaten alive by mosquitoes but I never enjoyed any spiritual enlightenment from the experience, so I have a hard time believing that being eaten by chiggers makes you more qualified as a guide.
I could go on, but it would be more examples of the same. Suffice it to say that I personally learn best when people tell me what they have learned, experienced, and come to believe without trying to convince me that they are right and everybody else is wrong. I have no trouble accepting the idea that I could learn from an indigenous shaman, but I do have a problem with setting them or anybody else up as the one true source and accepting that I should submit to their teachings and authority without question. It does not help that I have heard and witnessed numerous cases of shaman led ceremonies that did not have the container of setting intentions or integration and that left people with horrible backlash. These were shamans with decades of indigenous experience.
There is a lot here that I am expected to accept on faith in this book - unsubstantiated and unquestioned statements of how things are. Energetically, it feels the same to me as being told that Jesus is the only way to God. Show me a reason to believe you over the myriad of other sacred belief systems. Offer evidence. I left Christianity precisely because it makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims with the accompanying mandate that they are right and everybody else is wrong. Intellectual / spiritual humility and freedom are very important to me.
Toward the end of the book, there are some very interesting anecdotal stories that started to feel helpful and I definitely gleaned a few examples that fit the title, “Swimming In The Sacred.” And that was what I was looking for when I came to this book. But I really had to sift out a lot of chaff to get to the wheat. And even there, I found the confident tone and factual statements of how things are to be off putting. Christians will also confidently tell you how things work in the spiritual world. The level of confidence doesn’t make it true. In my experience, people speak most confidently when they are trying to convince themselves.
The last observation I’d like to offer is that there is a noticeable emphasis on the primacy of the role of healers for effecting healing. As in medicine, it is often neglected to point out that doctors do not heal the body. The body heals itself and the role of the doctor is to support that work. In this book, as with many psychedelic workers, I sense too much emphasis on the idea that psychedelic masters are healing and too little is being devoted to the idea that the “self” is the healer. This book suffers from that same messianic burden. Some of the modalities talked about in this book sound invasive to me - violating the primacy of the individual “self” with the hidden assumption that the healer knows better than the “self.” Maybe they do … but that’s a big maybe. It’s also possible that this is a spiritual violation of the autonomy of another sentient being.
The tone presents an obstacle
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Sexist Projections
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Love the topic and content
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