Sometimes I talk to God and sometimes God answers quickly, sometimes it seems like it takes forever or not at all.  Well I recently asked for something and it came quite quickly.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

What was it you may ask?  Sure you may ask. The answer is not important for the purposes of this post. That is my story and I am sticking to it. I have had things manifest in the past almost instantly so it is possible, very possible.

That is one reason I say to remain open to all possibility. You may also want to keep your fingers and toes crossed but I warn you that can result in permanent injury if you do that for too long, that also goes for holding your breath.

Fast forward backwards to near the end of last month I checked my horoscope, which I rarely do and this is what it said:

If you’re feeling somewhat pessimistic when it comes to love, you shouldn’t be — things are just about to change. However, if you want to take advantage of these great new opportunities, you need to toss out all the junk that’s been cluttering your heart (and mind). Stop obsessing about the past! Everything that happened was meant to bring you to this moment, with your open and giving heart intact.

Hot damn that looks mighty fine I thought.  Calm down please.  Moving right along again you really never know when the goods will arrive.  It is all a timing thing.  The Universe will deliver.  Time and space mean nothing to the Universe.  No-Thing. Notta. Well No-Thing does not really mean notta but it seemed to fit here so in it goes.

Of course they are also talking about the monkey-mind and clutter too. OMG. Do not go near the clutter, I mutter, and sometimes shudder!

Perhaps I really should have checked with my non-resident psychic friend in Kelowna on this. Then again, she is overworked and underpaid so perhaps not to push the envelope.  Her words, not mine. I think she is doing fine.

Speaking of Kelowna, yes I was and still am.  I have another dear girl friend there who has had some challenges. Hey don’t we all at times.

She graciously put me up while I attended my daughter’s wedding there in 2006.  I recently put her onto the book Practicing The Power of Now, well there is a link somewhere on the right hand side of the blog I believe.

Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from The Power of Now

Oh I think that is it, above.  I tried to do it before but it did not work.

in any case, I’ve talked to a few people of late about the book.  Well worth the read, it was for me and helped me immensely.  Quite the transformational book.

Ok, back to the series on relationships or at least the mention of them, of which I stress I am not an expert. Not everyone is for everyone but I do believe there is someone for everyone.  The trick is to find them and, yes, God can be called on to perform that miracle, and believe me it sometimes does take a miracle for many of us.

What is he rambling on about now you may ask? Well, I am not back to the Give Me Sympathy post! Let us move forward, please.  Thank you.  Hmm. That reminds me of Pacifika and the video I posted last July. I cannot find it here.  Where did it go? Darn, that is a pain when things go away like that.

Now getting back to the love is all there is theme, one of the early feelings about that subject was provided by The Beatles and the song If I Fell:

For me this is very simple, yet quite profound as were quite a few of their songs.  Yes and I am still pissed over John Lennon’s untimely death.

Ok, as long as we are talking about God, Love, Death, Life, Spirituality and good looks, I must present you with one of the better looking non-persons with attitude I ran into recently.

Without further ado then I present you with this handsome dude.  Unfortunately he is better looking than his mate.  Just don’t let on that you know that though. 

Ok folks that is it for today. I got a few more pics but will save them for another day. Even more of that quacky quacked up dude.  Keep those comments of gratitude coming.  Ok, I will go first again. I am grateful for the Sun that came out again today, in between the drops of rain.

Have yourself a loving, peaceful, prosperous and healthy day.

Eugene

Sometimes it is easy to lose focus and fall into the “why me?” way of thinking.  Of course we are caught up in what we sometimes think as life rather than the reality that we have created for ourselves.  We lose perspective.

What can we do about this?  How can we make a dramatic shift?  For sure it can be done and sometimes it is just as easy as using 6 words to accomplish that feat.  Ok, what are those “magic” words you may ask?   Simply, they are

“In five years, will this matter?

Sean Stephenson has some ideas and tips on how you can make that shift and put things into perspective, how we relate to others and how they relate to us.

If you are looking for ways to improve your life and are searching for a way to put things in perspective, have a look at this video.  It is well worth it, IMO.

Many have more serious health, economic, political, mental and physical conditions than we have. I am all for expressing gratitude and appreciation for what we have in life.

Wishing you much love, peace, good health and prosperity.  You deserve it!

What are you grateful for today.  Whatever that is, please feel free to make a comment here to express it.  It is good to write it down, journal it or  tell someone about it.

I will start it off.  I am grateful for my Fuji point and click camera.  It has given me much joy and has produced many photos for me.  It is magical!

Eugene

It is a beautiful day here in Victoria, BC Canada.  Canada is officially 142 years young today.

Lots of celebrations going on all across the nation.  Wishing all the Canucks a Happy Canada Day.

Celebration brings up the subject of music for me. Music transcends the mundane and uplifts us.   Canada has a history of producing some great musicians, poets, writers, performers etc.  I will post a few later on.  Just a sampling as there are too many to list.

In our capital city of Ottawa, Sarah McLachlan is performing today.  Here in Victoria one of the performers is Pacifika from Vancouver featuring a Peruvian born singer I first heard on CBCradio2.

It is impossible to  pick and choose the best one with such a rich list of artists with the likes of Neil Young, Anne Murray, Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Céline Dion, Shania Twain and so on.  There are many newer artists up and coming and who have arrived on the scene. Some move on to the USA and other countries and many choose to remain “Canadian” maintaining their connection with the country of Canada.

As a nation we are generally tolerant and takes things in stride and rarely shout about this great land of ours.  It is a natural beauty.

I like to view the natural settings we have, when I take time to do so, such as a recent photo I took.

I will leave you with one of Canada’s finest, Gordon Lightfoot singing about one of the greatest historical achievements in Canada. It is hard to imagine the difficulty in building the railroad across the varied and rough terrain.  I am sure many died along the way so people could travel across the country coast to coast.

Enjoy your day, wherever you may be.

Cheers,

Gene

Here are a few of the performing artists, mostly singers from Canada, you may have heard of one or two of them:

Bryan Adams
Paul Anka
Randy Bachman  The Guess Who
Paul Brandt
Michael Bublé
Tommy Chong
Tom Cochrane
Bruce Cockburn
Leonard Cohen
Bare Naked Ladies  group
Burton Cummings
Céline Dion
Leslie Feist
David Foster  composer
Sarah Harmer
Jeff Healey
Diana Krall
K.D. Lang
Daniel Lanois
Avril Lavigne
Gordon Lightfoot
Ashley MacIsaac
Natalie MacMaster
Sarah McLachlan
Alanis Morissette
Anne Murray
Nelly Furtado
Brad Roberts – singer for Crash Test Dummies
Sam Roberts
Serena Ryder
Hank Snow
Shania Twain
Ian Tyson
Sylvia Tyson
Chad VanGaalen
Gino Vannelli
Martha Wainwright
Neil Young

Apologies to the many others not mentioned.  Feel free to make a comment and add your favorites, if you wish.

I received an email from Scott last night in which contained a link to a video about water.  The video was called Water, The Great Mystery.  Indeed it is, I added the life part because without it life simply would not exist.

The video was compared with the movie What The Bleep Do We Know, which is an excellent movie. I have viewed that movie 5 or 6 times and learned something each time.

Anyway, this video is not quite the same thing but does give some powerful insights on just how magnificent water really is, H₂O.  It has some amazing qualities. Of course we know that life would not exist without water. Our bodies can contain up to 78% water.

Oops, just had to go and get a drink of water.  All this talk about water was making me thirsty.  We are fortunate to have an abundance of water around here.

There are many interesting things in the video, such as the work of Dr Masaru Emoto who has done experiments examining such emotions as love, peace, music, photographs, thoughts, prayers and the effects they have on water. How water responds differently to different emotions and treatment.  Also discussed is how our emotions affect one another and also can be transferred to water.

The video is 1 hour and 20 minutes long so view it when you have some free time, grab some popcorn or a glass or two of water.
Click Here to View, Water, The Great Mystery

Enjoy the movie!

I will leave you with a few more pictures from Mt Doug.  These are hidden treasures that you won’t see unless you hike up the trails.  Worth the effort, for me, at least.

Yes, I want to rename the blog, keeping the creative waves but the rest, I don’t know yet.  Suggestions?

Cheers,

genes creative waves

Well I suppose it is time to go green and provide a bit scenery from the other half of the excursion I made to Cordova Bay then hiking up the back side of Mt Douglas aka Mt Doug.

First though I am going to give an award to a fellow friend and blogger who writes very well and is a treasure.  Her name is Lydia and she has a blog entitled Serenity Talk for which you will find the link to on the right hand side.

The flower is not from Mt Doug, it is one I found in my yard.  Very pretty and appropriate I think.

Ok, so back to the trek up the mountain.  It is quite a climb but well worth the effort.  Here is what I found along the way. You must let your imagination run wild using the right side of your brain which is the most important one you know, for creativity.

Well, the first one is a beaver eating a dog , a croc, or something.  Surely this is a Canadian beaver.

For sure this is a beaver.  It is really clear.  You can see the foot or hand at the bottom.  I go with foot. But who’s foot is it?  Is partially consumed and being sucked in? That is one huge foot, magpie.

There is definitely a monster up this tree.  Look carefully at the menacing eyes and snout.  Looks like a werewolf from hell.  Or is it from Transylvania? Do not mess with this sucker if you want to get out of the forest alive.  I had to run like a bugger to escape, believe you me.  It is clearly excreting something below.  Well see more on that down aways.

This one has one eye or two with one covered with the focalized brains exposed.  They are not going to get my brains out of my head like that. I am out of here, quick!

I am afraid to even guess what is in here.  This tree is possessed.  Yikes!  NO NO do not stick your fingers in the crack.  It is a trap and you will be pulled in and devoured and become part of this scene in no time.

Thank God I got out of there before they got me!  But I think I have to go back, I forgot something there. Well that is part of the trip.   You should see the obstacle course I had to cover.  That will have to wait.

Cheers,

genes creative waves and ways

I did a short hike up Mt. Tolmie this morning and took along my fujifilm camera to see what I could see and photograph from the top.

It is taken on a beautiful sunny day in Victoria, BC. Yes, that is a snow covered mountain to the east and the view from up there is awesome. We had our snow back in Dec and this is just fine to look at it away over there in the scenic background.

I spent many winters in other parts of the country and this is just an ideal setting for me. It is breathtaking and lifts the spirit to be around here and such marvelous sites.

There is no doubt that Mother Earth still is a magnificent wonder to be enjoyed, appreciated and deserves to be treated with respect. This despite the harsh treatment she receives at times from the inhabitants of the planet of the human kind. Enjoy the view.

I most certainly did.

Best wishes and find your own gems wherever you may be.

Namaste.

genes creative waves

I have always had an interest in photography, of sorts.  Yet I had not taken up the hobby.  I recall in high school there was a fellow student who went around taking all kinds of pictures and even had a dark room at home to process the photographs.  His parents moved around a great deal so he was getting to see the world and play with his hobby and no doubt made it into a profession.  I did manage to get to see the dark room with photographs hanging all over the place but that is as far as it got.

Later on in my adult life at times I thought about taking some courses in photography but being a busy father with 3 children and having a demanding career, taking business courses and doing other things on the side, I never got around to doing anything about this interest that I had.

As for my interest, I suppose being male and as some would label me to have a tendency to be somewhat visual, but certainly not exclusively so, this may make some sense.  I certainly did not have a great appreciation for artistic things, although some paintings do appeal to me and also some things of a feminine nature would catch my eye at times! For sure, that I cannot deny.

In any case, late last year in 2008,  I bought a point and shoot, Fujifilm digital camera .  Not that model.  Hey maybe I will upgrade one day.

It turned out to be a real point and shoot experience.  I took a trip to downtown Victoria, BC , Canada, where I currently reside.  Victoria is situated on an island, Vancouver Island, quite close to Vancouver, BC.  The reason I say a real point and shoot experience is that it was a bright sunny October day and I could not see anything in the camera viewfinder.  So I was really just sort of aiming at what I wanted to take a picture of and pointing and shooting in that direction.

This seemed a bit strange, having not used the camera before and never a digital camera at that.  I was a bit exasperated at first, then became resigned to the fact that this was just the way it was. I just accepted the situation.  Like reading the book, Practicing The Power Of Now – Eckhart Tolle, as seen on Oprah, as Eckhart Tolle would likely suggest doing.  So I proceeded to take the pictures with the belief that they would, somehow, turn out fine.  And if they did not, so be it.  I certainly did not know how to use the various shooting modes and I still don’t.

I showed some of the photos to a few folks and got some positive feedback. I attribute it to the camera, the guy in the sky or whatever else may be lurking behind the camera lenses and helping me shoot.  I can see more now as I found a way to adjust the light inside for the viewfinder.

So that is where I am now, just dabbling a bit, taking some photos and enjoying doing so.  I have put together a pictorial video of some photos I took in downtown Victoria near the inner harbour, the Empress Hotel and the seawall.

****I have removed the video, please use the link below to view it instead.****

I will likely keep doing this for awhile.

Cheers,

genes creative waves

PS. I have also posted the video at  4Shared for a full screen version,  and may take the above one off if it keeps loading slowly or I just may choose to do so.