Archive for February, 2010

QUIT THE BLAME GAME

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

First off I will remind all of you reading this Blog that I have been a recovering alcoholic for 30 years. The whole underpinning of recovery from this ‘allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind’ disease is personal responsibility. You don’t have to be a drunk or a doper to want to blame others for your misfortunes. All of us are sick somewhere in our lives. All of us ought to look at ourselves–take our own inventory–to get free of whatever demons coaxed us into whatever miscues got into whatever hole we dug for ourselves. I have written a lot in the last two years how I have paid off all my credit cards and only buy what I can pay for. The value of my house fell like yours did. In recovery parlance I do the footwork and the results are none of my business–it is the concern of a Power greater than me or you.

No one is talking to the American public about personal responsibility. The talking heads want you to believe that the Government got us into this mess. Not. You got yourself into this mess. If we don’t become a culture that takes personal responsibility for our actions we are finished. Malfeasance and greed were a huge factor in banks and the Stock Market co-joining us in this fiasco. When I see tea-baggers rant and rail at Obama for his runaway deficit I wonder if anyone ever stopped to consider that he did not create why he had to step and avert a collapse–we did.

Where and when are we ever going to accept accountability for what we are facing. Haiti has a disaster and the world rushes to alleviate pain and suffering as well we should. When we are asked to pay off and do with less until we can afford to spend, we get our backs up and the blame game starts.

When is anyone going to look at us as a nation and ask what each of us can do to change? Change you and change the world you touch.

I am Albert Gaulden and I approve of this message.

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NARCISSISTIC AND DISSOCIATIVE

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Best-selling author of Harmonic Wealth James Arthur Ray was arrested and arraigned in Prescott, Arizona on manslaughter charges stemming from three fatal deaths in a sweat lodge ceremony he facilitated just outside Sedona, Arizona October 8. 2009. Bail was set at $5 million and, according to his attorney, he was unable to post bond.

It is odd and disturbing how Ray acted at the time of the tragedy. He fled the state immediately according to his attorney, Brad Brian, because the police told him that there was an ongoing investigation and Ray felt it was best, under the circumstances, that he return home to California. Subsequently one of his key ex-staff members, Malinda Martin told CNN’s Gary Tuchman that when she was giving CPR to one of the attendees who was unconscious, James Ray told her to stop. He was convinced, according to this woman, that each person had to go through this “death-like” process in order to heal what was obstructing them.

There have been so many eye-witness accounts of James Arthur Ray’s behavior during and after the deaths of three people. Born on November 22, this Scorpio, true to nature, may be trying to mask the torture he must be feeling to have facilitated a five-day workshop that ended in tragedy. In the revealing and educative books, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman and People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil by Dr. M. Scott Peck, narcissism is the equivalent of falling in love with oneself (word derivation comes from Narcissus: a beautiful youth in Greek mythology who falls in love with his own reflection). It becomes the Achilles heel of a lot of men and women whose reach exceeds their grasp, as Browning wrote–they go from being role models to shape-shifting into the most reprehensible dark and dangerous egocentric. Narcissism glued to dissociative disintegration of the self results in someone who is robotic and not self-realized at all. It is akin to the old Flip Wilson line as Geraldine, “The devil made me do it.”

Make sure the next time you sign up for a workshop that has risk factors, ask if there are those on site who can assist attendees if there are health issues. The pity is that a lot of people in need of basic mental health care opt for some of these extreme measure workshops to their own detriment.

I am Albert Gaulden and I approve of this message.

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PAY WHAT YOU OWE

Monday, February 1st, 2010

A couple of years ago my business partner told me that it was time to pay off revolving credit cards. I did. A year or so before that I wanted to go to a top-ranked wellness center to lose weight and I asked him if the company would pay for it and he said, “No. You ate it. You lose it. You pay for it.” And I did. Recently I have been seeing televisions ads that scream, “I owed $45,000 on my credit card and they settled for $11,000.” Then there is the name and telephone number where some Debt Resolution Company of record can do the same for you. Five minutes later an ad on the boob tube shouts, “I owed the IRS $155,000 and I only paid $21,000.” There is a phone number to call to end your Internal Revenue problems.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I am wont to say that all the free-loading started in 1959 with the birth of credit cards: BUY NOW. PAY LATER. This 50-year old baby is as responsible for personal financial malfeasance as anything else.

With all these “get out of jail” passes being pandered to the public, it is time for someone to call a spade a spade: most people are hanging by their fingernails financially because of the need to have what we can’t afford. As a kid when we asked our mother if we could have a bicycle, she would say, “Yes. Buy it with your own money. Cut lawns to get the money.” We were living under the Eisenhower Era, right after the end of World War II.

A great comic from 50’s and 60’s television, Red Skelton used to act in skits featuring a rogue character named Freddie the Freeloader. Freddie was always mooching off friends and conning unsuspecting strangers. I was reminded of Skelton and his Freddie the Freeloader creation when I saw these ads to let people off the hook for their indebtedness.

To quote my business partner, “You charged it. Pay what you owe.” The same goes for taxes.

I am Albert Clayton Gaulden and I approve of this message.

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