Ang gave a suggestion for a book which looks good, but I was thinking, maybe what we all should do, is put up some ideas in what we want to read about, or learn about.
Like, something about the 'warrior path?' There's other books with that theme.
Something geared toward a specific religion, or practice? Or animistic like shaman, or totems?
Energetic - like Law of Attraction? (I think The Secret touches on that).
Something on relationships? Anyway, toss in some suggestions what you want to learn/read about, and then maybe we can narrow it down.
I like this idea best, but careful not to break it down to far as then we are just doing what we already do. In other words someone starts a thread on Shamanism, well darn already have a section on that. Would have to b3 something we haven't already discussed much, least is how I see it.
Plus there is something else that a "Soma Book" group might consider during the design process. The title words Soma and Book. Both are very powerful words if you think about it. We know about Soma, it has been discussed a bit by Michael. What about the symbolic significance of "book"? According to the illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols, a book represents: The universe, the liber mundi and liber vitae. The book is connected to Tree symbolism and the tree and book can represent the whole cosmos.
Islamic: 'The universe is a vast book'.
That is just a small snippet of what the encyclopedia had to say. From this we can gather that books may be more than meets the eye. Even Gurdjieff espoused the value of reading so long as you know how to read well.
There is so much that can be learned from a single book, in theory, all that you could ever need to know, mentally at least, could be learned from reading any one book if only you were patient enough to read or drain all the knowledge from every single word and letter and even empty space (As those spaces have meaning too.).
So on the choice of a subject I think it best we all at least read a book.....
I can agree with The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Just have to see if my library has it in stock.
I think for the chatroom and or discussion formate. A good way to arrange it would be to have an initial chat discussion. Then, if possible, save the chat discussion, copy/paste it to the discussion room to start a thread. Then those who couldn't make it in to the chat in time can still partake. Then the discussion of one book would end when the thread has grown cold. We pick a new book and enter a new word-world.
