Between the Cracks: A blog by Albert Clayton Gaulden

As we look forward to a lot of grunt work in 2009 to get ourselves back to peace and prosperity, sign the pledge to:

1. Save more than you spend. Eliminating revolving credit card debit will increase your credit score when you need it most.
2. Refinance your house. The falling interest rates can lower your current payment by hundreds of dollars.
3. Tithe. You have no idea how receiving to share will increase your own financial well-being.
4. Go through your closet, attic, storage units and make a donation to the Goodwill or other worthy charities. Your discards are some else’s needs.
5. Cut back on services that you can do for yourself. Go an extra week before you go to the barber or hairdresser. Clean your own house. Put the savings in an interest bearing account.
6. Schedule down-time for yourself. You know the old saw, “All work and no play make Johnny a dull boy.”
7. Continue to ask others, “What can I do for you?”
8. Keep a journal. Keep stinking thinking out of your thinker.
9. Pray and meditate. The Divine needs to know He is your source.
10. Don’t believe a word of what you read or hear unless it rings true for you.

And may I end this end-of-the-year advise and consent by predicting that 2009 will be remembered as the year we all made humongous changes in how we view money, property and prestige, and that measurable recovery was anchor, locked and sealed by June.

Happy New Year!

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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I have been going to Egypt since November 1983. I was in a zany group that year that included Oscar-winning, Tony-winning, Emmy-winning actress Shirley MacLaine who would go on to write a series of best-sellers like Out on a Limb, and other popular metaphysical books which placed her at the cutting-edge of the Spiritual Revolution in the United States. In the peace and quiet of the 80’s and 90’s I went many times to the Land of the Pharaohs, Upper and Lower Egypt-below ground, in pyramids and through the massive Egyptian Museum-and each time I was more connected to what I know to be true for me: each of us comes back life after life not only to atone for past transgressions but also to be of service to others who need the wisdom we uncover in the powerful vortices of Egypt.

After September 11, 2001 the world appeared to be hostile and dangerous-a lot of people hunkered down in what they thought was a safer America. Our government has spent billions and billions of dollars to make us feel safe while telling us that at any moment terrorists would once again strike in these United States. And every time we heard the rattle of saber-talk many of us buried ourselves at home and at work but would never dare venture out into the world. After the recent attacks in Dubai, more of us contorted ourselves in a paralytic fearful vise. Fear became the emotion through which we prismed every decision, especially about foreign travel.

I am returning to Egypt with a dozen people February 16 – 26, 2009 with a clear and conscious openness to absorb whatever awaits us when we go to modern-day Egypt which holds the most prolific number of artifacts, digs, monuments and remnants of the most powerful dynasties in all of civilizations. We will not travel in fear but in faith that we have been permitted to come back to this cradle of civilization to enhance our spiritual centers, to make us better human beings. And we will go as welcomed guests among a people who are loving and kind and glad to see us. We will have tea in their small villages, invoke the child within us as we go into the Great Pyramid, stand before the Sphinx, buy crafts and scarabs and incense from the bazaars,  and perhaps lodge where President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, the longest serving ruler since Muhammad Ali in the 19^th century, resides.

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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There is so much ‘doom and gloom’ news from all sectors of the world, especially in the United States, that if one came back from the dead he might suspect that we had come to the end of the world-that everything was about to go up in smoke. One report has the unemployment filings at an all-time high. The stock market is on a rollercoaster and spending has come to a screeching halt.

What is apparent to me is that we are an ‘all-or-nothing’ society. As a nation-perhaps even as a worldview-we either live off credit cards and credit lines and spend like there is no piper to pay at the end of the shopping spree, or we hunker down in our cubbyholes and hold on to our last greenback. There is absolutely no balance in our financial lives.

What’s wrong with this picture? We have no discernment in how we buy or how we save. Fear runs everything. When the brokers were selling us hot air we kept throwing money in the market like that was no tomorrow. Once the renters who were lured by mortgage companies’ “too good to be true” sub-prime packaging, (word omitted) are now in foreclosure because they should never have been in home ownership at all. They could not afford it. But tell that to mortgage managers. I think it’s too little, too late.

As I look back at the supposed ‘fat-cat’ Clinton years in the White House I am not so convinced that a lot of this monetary nonsense did not start with his pie-in-the-sky policies. As much as most of us are so over Bush and can’t wait for the Obama rebuilding and reconstructing, Bush did not single-handedly destroy our economy. You and I did as much to devalue everything by continuing to sign-up and sign-in with our assets. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq contributed to the huge deficit, but I do not for one minute believe that government alone got us to this over-all state of rack and ruin-we are all complicit with the sorry state of affairs-from housing to money markets to runaway spending and little saving.

I tell you what I am doing. I am paying down and paying off debt and suggesting that those who would ordinarily swap presents with me do the same thing. There are children I will remember, spending less on them than in past years, but they so look forward to the Holidays. (After all, they are too young to have joined the mad march to financial disaster) I will sing carols and probably eat too much Christmas cookies and cakes, but I will restrain my desire levels and practice restraint of taste and over-eating. I may ask of those who need food and shelter and clothing, “What can I do for you?” but for the rest of us I will sing my way through the Holidays and face the New Year with less sturm und drang than in past years. There is something to be said for starting the New Year with a clean slate.

Happy Holidays!

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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When I watch Campbell Brown getting red in the face from all the news she thinks we are waiting hear, http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/brown.campbell.html I don’t for one minute believe a word she’s saying. On the other hand when Rachel Maddow http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26318771/ asks for someone to Talk Her Down on MSNBC, I want to rush to her aid. Campbell panders, Rachel ponders; Campbell is surrounded by pundits and Rachel more often than not stands alone.

Campbell Brown sounds like a made-up name as false as she is. When she is on camera with that slit-grin I want to hiss her off-stage. She is ill-prepared and she tries so hard to be in the middle but instead she is what television has become: a lot of talking over one another and a lot of hot air out of Brown.

I’ll stick with Maddow. Rachel is so real and she says it like it is. When she wondered why Barack Obama picked Rick Warren to give the invocation at his Inaugural Ceremony, I was wondering the same thing. You’d think that an out-and-about, shout to the rooftop lesbian would be a harder sell. I wouldn’t care what she is; I love Rachel Maddow and I hope Campbell Brown is soon baking cookies that Hillary Clinton didn’t and wouldn’t.

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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If you’ve had trouble getting into the Holiday spirit, you might want to volunteer at a local soup kitchen or halfway house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I have done this and it really puts all the expensive glitz and glitter into perspective. I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and saw an old pal of mine ringing the Salvation Army bell with the kettle accepting cold cash. I shook my friend’s hand, said “Happy Holidays” and put a ten spot in with the other cash.

As a counselor I hear a lot of sadness around this Holiday season particularly this year because we are all reminded about how much power we gave money and what money could buy. I am hearing a bit of happiness and joy especially from those who decided to do for others rather than give and get gifts this year.

Call someone who needs you this season and you’ll be lifted higher than any boy toy or girly thing you could ever receive. Looking into the faces of those grateful for a scrumptious meal is the greatest pay-off for doing for others what they cannot do for themselves.

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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Citigroup rate-jacked even their best customers in a mail-out notice to them yesterday and many of those relegated to the usury interest rates were their best credit-score card holders. These outraged clients of Citigroup were told that they could close-out their current credit card when it expired and added, and “it’s all in the fine print”.

There are members of Congress who are openly annoyed with Citigroup since they were included in the recent ziczillion dollar Federal bailout, and rather than lighten the load of the consumer they decided to stick it to them “in the fine print”.

As the bottom nears with all the cockamamie schemes and near-scandalous behavior of lending institutions, it appears that Congress may finally get involved with some of these ridiculous rate increases that institutions engage in, “because they can.” At least that’s what they are doing now, but I predict that better judgment will prevail and the likes of Citigroup will be legislated to back off and roll-back their usurious ways.

We all made a lot of mistakes in how we save and how we spend but Citigroup sank to a new low in its heavy-handiness. But just wait. There is nothing like the financial world falling apart to get some high-up authorities to notice and to make quick changes. Ah, tell it like it is. Some of these Congressional servants got stuck with rate-jacking “because it was in the fine print.”

Happy Holidays!

Albert Clayton Gaulden is the founding director of the Sedona Intensive and author of You’re Not Who You Think You Are: A Breakthrough Guide to Discovering the Authentic You. For more information about Albert and Sedona Intensive visit http://www.sedonaintensive.com.

Purchase You’re Not Who You Think You Are at http://tinyurl.com/5gycfm.

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