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DO YOU THINK THE WORLD IS FALLING APART OR COMING TOGETHER? EXPLAIN.
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Recently I had kidney stone surgery and on the heels of recuperating from that discomfort I developed upper back pain so severe it is indescribable. I am not a whiner or, as those of you who read my Blogs or have worked with me know, I am no ‘Baby Snooks’. My motto is “Play the hand that life dealt you,’ and that is what I am doing. But my favorite aphorism that I learned in recovery from alcoholism is ‘go to any lengths to find a solution to what ails you,’ and that is what I am doing.
Last week I had three acupuncture sessions, one myofascia release treatment, and several Network Chiropractic remedies and yet I still had the trapezoid issue with my back. I kept plowing on. I went to my alternative doctor and saw his nurse practitioner and got a muscle relaxant as well as invested in a state of the art heating pad. My compound pharmacist is conjuring up a salve to rub onto the worst spots, which he says has worked for a lot of folks here in the “Egypt of America—Sedona, Arizona”.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am doing everything I can—“going to any lengths”—to get back to a healthier state of physicality. Why am I sharing this with you? It is because everyone I know has had a summer from Hades—“If it’s not one thing it has been another” as my grandmother used to espouse—and most of us are doing what we can to change what these unwanted dilemmas are so we can be happier, more joyous and free of them at long last.
Having sickness in any area of our life is unpleasant. I am one who does not believe that “suddenly, he had a heart attack,” or “out of the clear blue sky she was struck down with cancer.” All of these mental machinations are nonsense and poppycock. Nothing is ever, “suddenly”. Whatever our condition is in, it has been gathering momentum and ultimate pain so we can make the needed correction, and return to robust health.
I am facing this temporary crisis like I did the financial meltdown—which most of all was not “suddenly everybody’s house was worth half its value as were most of our Retirement Funds”. That calamity was decades-in-the-works. Today I am taking the steps to heal what hurts and by following the healing hands that ring true for me—and most of all, to thank my Higher Power that I am not adding fuel to the fire of my calamity by drinking. This is my ‘one day at a time’ time to let my intuition lead me to solution resolution.
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://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
Is it just me or are a lot of you beginning to feel that there are a lot of people out there who are doing everything they can to annihilate the Good Earth. When I turn on the television to get some insights on something like health care, all I hear is ranting, raving, shouting, cursing and accusing the opposing view. Just when I thought giving up caffeine was a great idea, some study comes out counterintuitive to no-caffeine. After the costliest financial stimulus bail-out in history, I am self-aware that it is business as usual with banks: sky-high rates of interest, impossible loan guidelines and total disregard for what the stimulus package was designed to do. And don’t get me started on Clunkers for Cash.
Here is what I know to be true for me. If I am not over-spending or looking for an easy way out of a given situation, my internal reconciler—my all-seeing and all-knowing self—gives me the clear and conscious answers that all the supposed authorities and pundits can’t and won’t. Never forget that I am a dyed-in-the-wool G-d guy and always will be. But I have to be connected to a higher authority than what is the currency of opinion in the public arena. If I am trying to emulate some movie star or think like some smarty pants that has been designated the arbiter for all that is “in” and au courant for the masses, I might as well join the Grateful Dead groupies and follow them to an early grave.
TOUCHSTONES FOR DIVINE SELF-REGULATION
Make up your own mind. As fun as the internet can be, limit your time checking in with the great unwashed who specialize in a lot of junk and spam—worthless data. Read a book or journal until you hit pay dirt with your own intuitive power center.
Tend to your own business. Stay out of chat rooms and avoid idle gossip. Tearing someone else apart is not helping you. See the best in others, unless they are trying to hook you into the no-exit of fads and fashion.
Do your own research. Wikipedia is a sure source for me and it never hurts to go to the library and browse and seek until you find what you are looking for. And if you are hooked-up to your intuitive Geiger counter trust your own hunches. I read somewhere today that global warming started long ago from farmers burning forest in order to plant crop. Not.
Run it by someone you trust. I have a few people that always seem to dish it out just as I need to hear it. My guru and 12-step sponsor, and my business partner, though a lot younger than I am, are smart cookies.
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://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
When people ask me where to find opportunities for a better career or to make more money I always tell them the same thing to both inquiries: do something for someone else and you will benefit in the process. We have turned into an “it’s all about me” culture and it is time to see how helping someone else creates a wider door for you to see positive results for yourself as well.
There are ways to speed the plow to see how this works. Pick a cause that speaks to you.
Big Brothers/Big Sisters is an incredible organization that lets you change how you perceive your upbringing by helping a youngster change his or hers with your help.
If you like animals, a local Rescue Shelter would love to have you volunteer your services. Walking dogs that are kenneled for hours at a time will help the animal return to love and feeling cared for.
Delivering food to shut-ins like Meals on Wheels is a Godsend for the people you help and it will wash back on you in a very deep and meaningful way.
I know a woman named Marge who was stuck and oftentimes played the role of ‘poor pitiful Pearl.’ She had lost her job and didn’t know where to find another one. After delivering food to bedridden men and women her gratitude was so overwhelming that a family member of one of her deliveries asked her if she would like to move in and do 24-hour care. When the woman told her the pay scale, it was double what she had been making. She gave up her apartment—no rent—and after six months the person she was caring for died. Someone immediately offered her another caregiver situation. Five years later, Marge owns a service company that supplies fulltime caregivers as well as staff who offer services from grocery shopping, dog walking, lawn care and many others things shut-ins need.
The best way to see change in your own life is to help someone else in need. The spiritual law says that when we help others, we ourselves are taken care of.
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://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
I don’t know about you but not since I’ve been born—I am in my 7th decade—have I felt such an overwhelming need to be anchor, locked and sealed with the Divine, the Creator, whom I know as God. When I was drinking I tried all the glitter and glamour—parties, exotic vacations (and I was always drinking in some fancy bar or dive—the Eiffel Tour and the Great Pyramid be damned), wearing the right clothes, being with the “in” crowd, acting like what they needed for me to be—and I never cared a tinker’s damn about an authority beyond this world; I never prayed to the one source who could guide me and lead me to a clear and conscious place of discovery about me and what I was supposed to do with my life. Now that I have not only found God within me, He is my moment-to-moment Guide through good times and bad.
Here’s how I connected with my Higher Power.
First and foremost, I had to bottom out with all the things that didn’t fulfill me, which I have already written about. Money, property and prestige are the Great Deceivers. In a moment of clarity I cried out, “God help me,” and He did and my life changed.
Secondly, make a list of all addictions and compulsions and find a support group to help you let go of what has been standing in the way of a spirit-filled life.
Thirdly, listen for the voice of intuition to whisper good orderly direction to you. I like to think of intuition as God’s spokesperson.
No. 4 on how to make a shift is to consider where you’ve been and how most of what you have been doing isn’t working. Pick someone you trust and do an inventory.
Fifth for me was to journal every day. It gets all the clutter out of my head and on the paper where I can see what the butterflies and bee’s chattering has been all about.
The sixth thing on my list of change-over is to meditate. Meditation allows me to listen for the still small voice of intuition to give me God’s directions.
And the last thing I did and still do is to turn my will and my life over to God. I was told that my life was none of my business; it was God’s business.
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://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
I listen to so many false impressions about how you have just got to kill your Ego—run his rear end out of town—that I feel compelled to blab on FaceBook, My Space and Twitter that so many of you have it all wrong about the Ego. You do not have to annihilate it—blow it to smithereens—reduce it to dust. Rather, your Ego must be embraced. Yes Sir and Ma’am. If you want to become authentic and real and legitimate as the day is long you must let your Ego lead you through the process to endorse and legitimize your open-minded self in order to be who you really are.
I love what I read the other day about how Freud replaced faith in God with the concept of the Ego and how that long and winding diatribe has become the “in” mania of all of us for decades. I’m not sure I agree with Sigmund. Before Freud changed the game of self-realization, we all struggled with trying to determine who we really are. In the interim, psychology kept trying to convince all of us that we needed a strong self-image without warning us of the nefarious and dark and dangerous malfeasance of our imposter, camouflaged and disguised untrue self, aka our Ego, who is determined in its Godless, unfounded fashion to keep us believing and doing things that are not actions of our authentic self.
If you want to make peace with what you perceive to be Public Enemy No. 1 (better known as Ego), and to hear that part of you confess and ultimately change, you need to find a way to sit down and talk things over with it. Mediators succeed in bringing warring parties to the bargaining table to end a dispute in a reasonable and loving manner. The same technique will work for converting the Ego into Open-Minded and Reasonable that will result in your becoming the Real You.
You may find this odd at first but the more you talk to yourself, after all the Ego is a part of you just as your Shadow Self and God or the Divine are, sooner rather than later you will find compliance and alliance with the former trouble maker, your Ego. Ask him questions: “What can we do together to make a more holistic and happier person?” He will stammer and stutter—remember it is your mind and your capacity to coax that part of you into cooperating with you to become authentic and real. Keep asking questions and you’ll soon be able to let the Ego come over to your side of the aisle. I mentioned there needs to be conversion, and there will be. Your enemy, your opponent to authenticity, will shape-shift and a Consciousness will emerge which will be co-authored by your open and willing side and your converted Ego, which is now more akin to the voice of intuition. Together you will work out a game plan to live happier and with greater integrity.
The next time you hear someone who wants to discuss how to kill off their Ego, say to them, “Have you got a minute?” Walk them through what has worked for you and you will feel as if you have converted someone who can now be a truer and more authentic friend.
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://www.yourenotwhoyouthinkyouare.com/
