I played the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series ages ago and I want to experience them again. However, I find that I do not have as much patience and free time as I once did. I would like to use some cheat codes to get me through the game.

I want Shields of Harmony for my characters so that one Chaos spell from an enemy mage doesn't decimate my party. I want free Rods of Ressurection to revive party members and keep the game moving forward. I might want Boots of Speed for everyone, too, to make things move along faster.

I know there is a cheat program called CULA or something, but I'm not very tech savvy. Can anyone help me with this?

It isn't cheat program, it refers to in-game console. You can use specified commands to do variety of tasks, including creating items, adding EXP, gold and so on.

On this page, under CLUAConsole section you'll find how to activate it on different Infinity Engine games. Just follow that steps.

Example:
After activating & opening the console, the following command would grant your character Shield of Harmony:
CLUAConsole:CreateItem("SHLD25", 1)

Okay, but now I can't find the baldur.ini file. I've looked under All Programs > GOG > Baldur's Gate II > Explore Baldur's Gate II and then looked through several files. Maybe I don't know how to get to the proper directory?

If I could have a little more help, that would be great :)

baldur.ini can be found in game installation directory. By default it is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Baldur's Gate 2\

Open Windows Explorer and go to this location.

Within the Baldurs Gate II folder I see folders titled cache, characters, data, mplayer, music, override, portraits, save, script compiler, scripts, sounds, temp, and tempsave.

I also see files titled Autorun, Baldur.err, baldur (Application), baldur (Icon), baldur (Configuration Settings), baldur (Text Document), bgate2.mpi, BGConfig, bgdxtext, bggltest, BGMain, CharView (Application) and so on.

I see no "baldur.ini" file. Am I looking in the right place? Do I have to enable some other view mode to see it?

That's right place, you just don't have extension view enabled.
baldur.ini = baldur (Configuration Settings)

Edit: if the console isn't working in-game, go to

C:\Users\(your user)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program files\GOG.com\Baldurs Gate 2

and edit baldur.ini you can find there.

Okay! Thanks so much, Thiev. I'll try it when I get back from work.

The file is simply named Baldur. You may have to search for it

It will not let me save the change to the baldur.ini notepad file. In fact, it will not even let me save it unchanged. It says file path error.

Then your outta luck

Outta luck? Really?

No Edit, No cheats

Why will it not edit if so many others have used this method?

Don't listen to Landeril.
Cope the file to Desktop, edit, and paste back.
All these problems are due to User Account Control. To avoid them, next time install the game outside Program Files folder.

Didn't think of that method.