SatyaCenter Founders

Curtis Lang & Jane Sherry

Letter From the Founders

Satya Center.com is a community website focusing on alternative health and healing, relationships and global news.

Why combine self-help, spirituality, relationships, health and healing and globalnews all in one website?

It's simple, really.

We have a holistic view of life. The choices we make individually will determine our health, our spiritual growth, the health of our relationships, and the ability of human civilization to create a peaceful, sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.

We stand at a crossroads in world history, and we must choose between two worlds -- the me-first world of egoistic gratification and the world perceived as an interconnected web of life. Our health, our relationships, our environment and global peace depend upon our decision.

Spiritual practice might seem like a solitary activity. Eyes closed. Et cetera.

But, the more I pursue my own self-realization, the more I seek to improve my own spiritual practice, the more I find myself connecting to others. I connect to others on the same path. I connect to teachers and priests. I connect to a tradition and all its members. I connect to spiritual seekers everywhere in the world. The more I meditate, the more tolerance I generate, the more compassion. As I meditate, and pursue other practices, I find forgiveness for my younger, reckless self, for individuals and groups I may have seen as enemies in the past, and for humanity as a whole, caught up in its current adolescent growth spurt.

The more I pursue love, the more my heart opens to love, and the more my heart opens to love, the more love comes into my life. That's the true power of spiritual practice. To make us see and feel and know that we are not alone. Far from being alone, we are inter-connected with a myriad of beings throughout time and space in a complex web of relationships that transcend our conscious awareness or capacity for mental calculation.

Photo by Jane Sherry

Our spiritual practice, our health and our psychological well-being all depend upon good relationships. Above all, we need to cultivate a good relationship with Spirit, a good working connection to the Source of all creation, good family relationships, good love relationships, good community relations and good world relations.

We are the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. The health of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat is crucial to our physical health. So our environment, and the health of our environment, depends upon our ability to achieve a balanced way of life that respects the living, breathing planet we live on, our Mother Earth.

We import food, investment capital, oil, cars, handbags, scarves and cellphones from around the world. The stability of our economy depends upon political stability in fragile, rapidly evolving societies in politically volatile neighborhoods across the globe.

The safety of the food on our plates at the local chain restaurant depends upon the food safety protocols of Third World laborers operating in virtually unregulated agricultural industries. Reforming our own additive and chemically addicted, lobbyist driven, politically contrived cheap food policies here at home will not insure that our children eat healthy food. If you are what you eat, then you are the world.

Water is no longer considered a natural resource to be provided to all American citizens at affordable rates. The price of water in some of our cities is becoming tied to the needs of global corporations, some headquartered in Europe, who own the local water systems that have been privatized. Their activities are, to a great extent, beyond the political reach of American citizens. The politics of the local water system, the safety, security and affordability of water for individual consumption, agriculture, industry and fishing is becoming global politics.

We are learning more and more about the true cost of the oil in our gas tanks every day.

For every $1 we spend on oil from the Middle East, we spend $5 on the American military infrastructure in that part of the world to guarantee the flow of oil to the US. If our gas prices reflected the cost of our military presence in the Middle East we would be paying $10 a gallon and more.

Stock Photo

In other words, the US government is subsidizing the American oil consumer a substantial amount of money on gasoline by acting as world policeman in the Middle East. The true cost of gasoline and other oil consumption in America is hidden by the vast investment of tax dollars into the defense budget.

Europeans and Japanese are more dependent upon Middle East oil than the United States, so the United States military expenditures in that area could also be seen as subsidies to client states, a powerful inducement to the Trilateral governments to follow Washington's lead in matters of consequence.

It is an indication of US weakness that European governments mainly refused to support the Iraq war and the Japanese have stayed basically neutral. These governments seem no longer to believe in the efficacy or necessity of the American Middle East military energy security umbrella.

If that should prove to be true, then the Bush administration's cavalier decoupling from our European allies and others around the world, could prove extremely damaging to the economic and political power of the United States. Could it be that the American imperial presence around the world is becoming more of a liability than an asset to our allies?

This is a legitimate question, but I have not seen it raised in any discussion of the Iraq war in the American media or by American politicians. The question is certainly on the minds of policymakers and citizens in Europe, Japan, China and Russia, however. Russia's oil policies increasingly reflect nationalistic concerns, as Americans are cut out of the loop, and Russia makes deals with European, Japanese, Chinese and middle eastern countries to build pipelines that will deliver not one drop of Russian oil to American SUVs.

America's energy policies are tied to America's military empire, and America's imperial politics impact the daily lives of countless citizens of other countries, but American politicians and media act as though the opinions of other countries are irrelevant to American policy-making and American well-being. This kind of arrogant myopia seems consistent with the historical record of empires in decline, suggests the need for American re-engagement with the world on more egalitarian terms, and does little to arouse confidence in American policy makers and elites.

When a global oil crunch hits in a few years, as a result of increased demand in China and India, and Mid-East supply-side concerns, America may well be unpleasantly surprised, while other highly industrialized countries band together to help one another through this difficult transition to a post-cheap-oil economy.

Meanwhile, Bush administration officials float trial balloons in the press suggesting reasons for war in Syria, Iran, and North Korea. The vast cost of our global hegemony and our oil economy seem set to skyrocket. How much blood, how much treasure, how much credibility, and how much good will have we already squandered? America's global leadership depends, ultimately upon political pillars -- and without credibility, moral leadership, and trust in America's will to do the right thing in the world, our American empire will crumble. American opinion is divided about what course to take. Should we become ever more like Imperial Rome, or should we join the community of nations as a respected equal?

Read the latest news about America's cultural-political wars in the SayaCenter.com politics link directory, and you'll find sources ignored by the mainstream media, and the sound-bite culture that thinks news is really entertainment and that politicians are celebrities rather than servants of the people.

Wouldn't it make sense to work on energy conservation and development of alternative energy resources instead of gearing up for endless wars? We are interdependent with the rest of the world. Check out the latest environmental news from around the world in the SatyaCenter.com environmental link directory.

Do we want to institute a draft and indulge in lengthy conventional wars of colonial occupation, nuclear saber-rattling, or even surgical nuclear strikes, to maintain our lifestyle, at the risk of becoming a pariah state to the rest of  the world?

The American government can no longer afford to act so self-centered. Too often the American government seems not to listen to others, too often our government seems to speak the language of the aristocrat, to assume the rights and privileges of a Divinely appointed power.

We must learn humility, because we are interdependent with the rest of the world. We must start to reach out to our friends, our neighbors, our rivals, even our enemies, and seek to create a more genuine sense of world community. We must start that process by listening to what our neighbors around the world have to say.

Find sources for the latest news from around the world in the SatyaCenter.com globalnews link directory and you'll get viewpoints from America's allies, clients, neighbors and critics around the world. Listening is the first step toward improved relations with our neighbors.

Photo by Jane Sherry

Too often our institutions, our national government and our corporations also seem to ignore the temporal interdependence of things -- the inter-generational community of interests represented by the environmental commons. Our decisions, our lifestyle, our values, and the decisions made by our leaders affect the environment our children and grandchildren will inhert.

Our system of industrial agriculture degrades the earth to produce more and more low-cost, low-quality food. Because industrial agriculture pollutes the earth and water and degrades the soil, our food contains less and less of the vital nutrients we need for healthy living. Factory produced foods of all kinds, vegetables, meats, fish, eggs, dairy products, all are increasingly contaminated with chemicals, diseased animal parts, virulent bacteria ...and more.

Then the fast-food industry takes this low-quality factory food and packages it into highly advertised Supersized, chemically laden, preservative rich, low-cost meals consisting mainly of sugar, fat and carbohydrates -- meals that are intrinsically toxic and inimical to human health.

Governmental regulators in Washington seem unwilling to concede the extent of the problem or to propose the kind of visionary thinking that the situation demands.

Meanwhile, the public is voting with their pocketbooks. And they are voting for locally grown, non GMO organic produce, meats, dairy and fish that they buy from farmers they know personally. New types of micro-markets for those interested in alternatives to factory produced foods are springing up across America.

Community sponsored agriculture is one such experiment. Industrial agriculture won't provide you with safe, vital, nourishing food at low prices. It never has. You have to make informed choices. Find out more about healthy farms and gardens, sustainable agriculture and healthy food in the SatyaCenter.com link directories.

Too often, our medical systems treat people as material mechanisms rather than as living, breathing spirits, spiritual beings inhabiting a physical reality. Too often our medical professionals and the insurance industry that controls the practice of medicine in America neglect the holistic approach to medicine.

We are increasingly taking responsibility for integrating preventive health care practices into our every day routines, because we have bumped up against the limits of a very efficacious, but very expensive, high-tech medical system, and we know that improving our diets, lowering stress with meditation and spiritual practices, making time for yoga, t'ai chi, and other forms of integrative exercise, and using natural foods and herbs as alternatives to over the counter and often-prescribed pharmaceutical drugs will improve our quality of life and lower our exposure to health problems over a period of decades.

The medical establishment and the insurance companies and the government and your pension fund won't guarantee you a good quality of life. That depends upon you. Find out more about your health care choices, and discover the best websites with information about alternative and complementary medicine in the SayaCenter.com health section's link directories.

A marriage certificate, a big wedding, and a guilty conscience won't guarantee a lifelong bond. Our relationships, our families, our spiritual development, our emotional well-being, all depend upon our ability to take responsibility for making our relationships our best sources of healing.

You can't count on the priest or judge or parents to hold the lovers together, to hold the family together.

In so many areas of life your own intuition, your own inner guidance, your own conscience is your best guide these days. Learn how to develop your own inner guidance, and how to create loving relationships that last in the free SatyaCenter.com E-book Back to the Garden: Cultivating Love in Our Lives. This E-book is a serial, and the first few chapters are available now. Check back for more to come. . .

Increasingly there are two types of people. Those who are told what to think, what to do. And those who think for themselves and do what they know is right.

Photo by Jane Sherry

So now, it's really up to each one of us. If you want to find yourself, if you want to experience the joys of spiritual development, then seek the answers within. You may be Buddhist, Native American, Hindu, Moslem, Jewish, Christian or New Age, but the answer lies within.

If you want to live a long, healthy life learn the difference between junk food and food that nourishes your body, mind, and soul. Learn to live a healthy lifestyle so you don't need the expensive, often painful benefits of heroic Western medicine.

Above all, if you want a fulfilling life, a life that nourishes your soul and allows you to be of service to others, then seek love first, and seek to know love above all else.

Lovers and mystics alike know that ecstatic moment of unity humans find in sexual union, in prayer, and in meditation. Open your heart to love, and your mind and ego will eventually disappear. You will be enlightened, for that one moment.

And in that moment, we can hear the voice of our own conscience, our own inner guidance, our own Higher Self. In that moment, we can learn to love -- to love ourselves, to love one another.

We all know that healthy relationships make for happy lives. Yet how many of us put up with relationships that wound us again and again? These relationships are crying out for our nourishment, love and attention, yet we put more energy into keeping score  than into loving one another, we focus our attention on what difficult people our families and friends have become.We don't take the time to improve ourselves and our relationship to the Divine, which is the ultimate source of love and light that can refresh and renew our relationships with lovers, partners, family and friends.

And we all know that our choices are what count in life. The choices we make determine the quality of our relationships, our spiritual practice, our eating habits, our exercise program, our politics, our entire lifestyle.

We can't afford to let others make our choices for us in this world.

We have to discover our own truth for ourselves, and then find the courage to let our truth guide us every day.

That's a holistic way of life.

Self-help, spirituality, alternative health and healing, organic agriculture, relationships and globalnews.

Self, family, neighborhood, and the global community.

Because we are interdependent with the rest of the world.

If you're looking for the alternative to the conventional wisdom, you've taken the first step.

You've come to SatyaCenter.com.

Welcome!