One of the things that keeps me busy a lot is how I can live a life of spirituality:

How can I express my love for God every day of my life in everything I do? 
How can I bring/integrate everything I am finding in my meditations in my day-to-day life?
How can I constantly change in the middle of my daily routines?
etc.

It seems to be so easy to slip into a daily routine, to forget about God, love, spirituality, change and movement forward in everyday life.

To help with that I love finding and reading quotes that inspire me to stay conscious all the time. A couple of days I found this quote that I really like, because what Gourasana is sugesting can easily be practiced in my job and also my private life every day, as I am on the phone quite often.

The quote is:
Practice (...) meditation while you are on the phone; for the entire time that you are on the phone, no matter who you are talking to, regardless or your like or dislike of them, you remain 100 percent in control of your being - which you can only do by controlling your emotions. Do it in a really attentive way. Don't chatter and communicate about anything unimportant. Remember to be constantly listening to everyone you are talking to; listen to the tone of their voice; be in a calm, peaceful, and controlled state. Bring a meditative state and consciousness into your life 24 hours a day, so that you will want to do this meditation for the pleasure it brings.
Gourasana
Source: Modern-Day Meditation Guide Book by Jim St. James

http://www.gaia.com/quotes/76628/practice_meditation_whil/by_gourasana 

The day before I had found this quote I was on the phone with someone that is famous in my company to talk so slowly and use so many extra words that it is very hard to listen to what she says and not get impatient and hang up before this woman is done. I had the same reaction to her call as everyone had told me they had - impatients, not listening, trying to hang up and get away,... When I found this quote a day later I had to think of this phone call and how I could have reacted differently. I will keep you posted about how it works but I am determined to change and to listen better.

Books, audio books, meditation classes and retreats and books and books and more meditation classes and another meditation retreat and then some more books. I always imagine living in a house with a gib living room that has a whole huge, huge wall full of book shelfs.

One of my favorite books is "Practicing the Presence of God" by Brother Laurence. It has been inspiring and moving me for years. One of the quotes that I found in this book is always an example for me for how I want to live every day:

I love little cafe's. For me the most relaxing thing is sitting outside a nice cafe, when the sun is shining, having books to read or to write with me, drinking a cappuccino and watching the people go by. After a day like this there is always a smile on my face.

I talked to a friend of mine who mentioned something about the 'momentum of change'. Somehow this phrase stuck in my mind and I have been thinking about what this means to me ever since. Sometimes I resent change or reluctantly accept it. But I also know the other side of wishing different things would change and they don't seem to change as fast as I would want them to. But for me the momentum of change means that I actively do steps to change myself or certain situations even if I only do very small steps at a time. Somehow I experienced that if I start with a small step of change here and there a momentum of positive change gets created that I love.

Things I will do differently starting tomorrow morning are: I will dance in the morning to a couple of my favorite songs to start the day in a positive and alive way and I will put really nice make up on tomorrow (which I have hardly done since a long time) to start the day also with a feeling of beauty and appreciation and giving to myself. I will check out and see what this will do and then maybe I need to change this up again after a while.... let's see.

Momentum of change.

Prayer has been my saving grace many times in my life. Writing in my last blog about the book "Left to Tell" got me thinking about prayer.

One of my most prayed personal prayers over the years has been


This translation feels a bit a strange since normally I am praying this prayer in my mother tongue, which is not English, but it still expresses my desire to give all of myself to The Lord. Do I always know what God's will for me is? No. but I trust in that in the sincerity of my prayer the answer will be found. Trusting is not always easy but over the years I learned that it is a decision that I can make in the moment. And somehow deciding to trust God always leads to more trust because I can always see the results of my trust clearly, which leads to more trust.

Also, I found a very beautiful web page on prayer today, that helped inspire me to write about prayer today www.theladyinprayer.org

Are you praying? Why or why not? If yes, what are you praying for? And what have you experienced through praying? How did you come to pray?....

Oh, my story how I started up praying: I was brought up Roman Catholic and always loved God and going to church and praying and all of it. But through life slowly that all changed and with 17 I had stopped praying or even believing in God for that matter. Then I received a tape from a friend with a women talking about her relationship with God and prayer and how real it is etc. I can't remember much of the tape but she said, that prayer works and if you are not sure that it does just try it out - pray and see for yourself that it works. Being a rather scientific minded person I liked the "science project: prayer" and thought of a prayer that would help proof that prayer works (or proof that it doesn't).

My test prayer was this: I was really, really bad in math and had a math exam the next day. Going against all deeply engrained Catholic believes I actually prayed for something for myself - that I would write a math test with a good grade (which never happened normally). The result: I had the best grade in class (not even understanding what the subject was even about). But not only that there was an astonishing huge gap between my grade and the 2nd best grade and all the grades of other people. For this one math exam my grade was truly outstanding.

Well, having proven the point that prayer works I didn't pray for the results of future math tests anymore and had the same bad math test results as always. But that wasn't the point anyway, I just wanted to see whether prayer works and having seen that math tests were not so important subjects to pray about anymore.

Just finished reading the book "Left To Tell - Discovering God Amidst The Rwandan Holocaust" by Immaculee Ilibagiza and Steve Erwin for the 3rd time. This is one of my favorite books that always touches me. Almost all of Immaculee's family got killed in the ethnic killing in Rwanda in the beginning of the 90ties in which more than 1 million people got killed withine 3 months (who can even imagine something like that?). She herself survived hidden in a small bathroom with 7 other women. This is her story of survival and courage, of unbelievable faith and forgiveness. Immaculee is a true example for me and I am always strive to pray at the depth of prayer that she has been living.

I have 2 places to do my best thinking at: 1. in a nice cafe, drinking a cappuccino, looking at the people around, maybe reading a book and just chilling. 2. in the bathtub. I always have all kinds of things with me when I am in a bathtub, just in case inspiration calls - something to write, somethign to read, my phone,... Relaxing really helps to think.

My most important class or seminar that I have ever taken was called The Intensive, now called the Miracle of Love Seminar. I participated in it in 1993. After just a few hours I had the feeling that this seminar is moving and helping me to change more than all the things (meditations, classes, seminars,...) I had done before this seminar taken together ever did. Now 15 years after my life is still different than how it would have been without the Intensive. I can truly say it had a long-term effect on every part of my life and that it what really counts for me. http://www.miracleofloveseminar.org/indexold.html

This is the first time ever I am writing a blog. And have a pretty serious subject that I want to write about right away: death and not wasting any time while living. Have been watching a movie made by a friend of mine who died not too long ago. The movie was made 2 months after she found out that she had cancer and basically nothing really could be done anymore. So, she made those little movies to be able to say whatever she still wanted to say before she would die. And this a link to one of her movies.