the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.
It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do.
It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.
It will make or break a company… a church… a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day.
We cannot change our past…
we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude…
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
Holger: I like Charles’ 10/90% formula.
I had my own attempt to become scientific: “The sense of separation is 10% faulty thinking and 90% muscle-memory.”
Yes, attitude is fundamental, but who is in charge?
Is there a personal, separate “me” that can change, or is beneficial change the byproduct of a deeper embrace of Being; seeing that we are not who we think we are.
I call my reflection in the window tonight Didn’t look away, didn’t dim the light All the little doubts tried calling my name But I smile back, I’m not the same
Every step I took left a mark on the floor I know what I’m worth now, more than before I’ve been quiet long enough to hear my voice Now every move I make is a choice
I don’t need permission, I don’t need a sign I’ve been waiting on me all this time
I’m standing in my light I feel it shine No shadows on my mind tonight I’m standing in my light Clear and bright This is me and it feels right
Used to second guess every word I say Now I let it roll, let it sway Every scar tells me I survive Every beat says I’m alive
I made peace with who I’ve been I see power in my skin No more running, no disguise I trust the fire in my eyes
I walk steady, head up high Not chasing stars, I am the sky Every breath feels so true I finally see it through and through
I’m standing in my light I feel it shine No shadows on my mind tonight I’m standing in my light Strong and bright This is me and it feels right
I woke up feeling lighter than before Like I finally know what I’m here for The mirror didn’t ask me who to be Just smiled back honestly
I used to carry weight, the world in mind Old fears, old words stuck in time Now I let them fall behind my feet Every step feels incomplete, no complete
I don’t rush the moment, I don’t fight the flow I’m exactly where I need to go
I’m clearer than yesterday Strong today I trust my heart, I trust my way I’m clearer than yesterday No delay I’m here, I’m real, I’m here to stay
I hear my name when the silence calls Not afraid of my rises or my falls Every lesson carved into my sound Every truth keeps me grounded now
I don’t hide what I feel inside I let it move me, let it guide There’s a rhythm in my spine It says this life is truly mine
I don’t need to prove a thing tonight I glow steady, not too bright I walk forward, calm and sure What I am feels solid, pure
I’m clearer than yesterday Strong today I trust my heart, I trust my way I’m clearer than yesterday No delay I’m here, I’m real, I’m here to stay
I was raised by a professor and a teacher. I went to an “elite” international school. I studied law and philosophy. I completelyidentified with what I believed wasmy ability to think.
Thinking was mandatory: no thinking, no result. Everything needed an intellectual approach, by default.
But I was incredibly lucky to eventually find out that thinking about things does nothing. It is pointless. And instead of turning me into an incapable idiot as I feared, all it did was uncover peace.
It’s not like there’s nothing left to think about. It’s that thinking doesn’t do anything and there’s no one in control of it anyway.
Thoughts are about an imaginary future or past, things not under control, or fictional separate agents. The body doesn’t function because of thinking. Interactions are smoother without thinking. Speaking, writing, and other pursuits only flow while ignoring thoughts. Pleasure and joy are ruined by thinking, as we all know …
Even planning, reasoning, calculating … do we have to think about them for them to happen?
Things happen and don’t happen despite voluminous thinking, just look around.
Thoughts are empty shells. And so is the thinker. Where is this thinker we simply assume exists?
I can’t remember why I cared so much about thinking. I prefer peace now.
About Words (by Ralph)
On 28 Jan 2026, at 5:09, Ralph wrote:
“Be mindful when it comes to your words. A string of some that don’t mean much to you, may stick with someone else for a lifetime.” -Rachel Wolchin
“Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can be only forgiven, not forgotten.” -Unknown
“Words are free. It’s how you use them that may cost you.” -KushandWizdom
“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” -Rumi
“…But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run wild and cause you grief.” -Unknown
“The secret of being boring is to say everything.” -Voltaire
“One kind word can change someone’s entire day.” -Unknown
“Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.” -Pearl Strachan Hurd
“Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.” -Yehuda Berg
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see.” -Joseph Conrad
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” -Mother Teresa
“The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words.” -Unknown
“Be careful what you say. You can say something hurtful in ten seconds, but ten years later, the wounds are still there.”
“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
“Don’t mix bad words with your bad mood. You’ll have many opportunities to change a mood, but you’ll never get the opportunity to replace the words you spoke.” -Unknown
“Don’t ever diminish the power of words. Words move hearts and hearts move limbs.” -Hamza Yusuf
“Words are seeds that do more than blow around. They land in our hearts and not the ground. Be careful what you plant and careful what you say. You might have to eat what you planted one day.” -Unknown
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” -Edgar Allan Poe
“A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.” -Jessamyn West
“Good words are worth much, and cost little.” -George Herbert
“Your words have power. Speak words that are kind, loving, positive, uplifting, encouraging, and life-giving.” -Unknown
“Kind words are a creative force, a power that concurs in the building up of all that is good, and energy that showers blessings upon the world.” -Lawrence G. Lovasik
“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” -John Keating
“The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest.” -Markus Zusak
“Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.” -Abraham Joshua Herschel
“If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words, we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive.” -Betty Eadie
Funny typos
On 1 Feb 2026, at 6:06, Ralph wrote:
CHURCH BULLETINS Thank God for church ladies with typewriters. These sentences, with their typos or slips of tongue, actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:
The sermon this morning: “Jesus Walks on Water.” The sermon tonight: “Searching for Jesus.”
Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don’t forget to bring your husbands.
The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.
Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.
For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack’s sermons.
The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing: “Break Forth Into Joy.”
A rice-and-bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What Is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.
The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.
Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM–prayer and medication to follow.
The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
This evening at 7 PM there will be hymn-singing in the park across from the Church. So bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done.
Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this great tragedy.
The rosebud on the altar this morning is to announce the birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer.
This afternoon there will be a meeting in the south and north ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.
Tuesday at 4 p.m. there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early.
Wednesday, the Ladies Liturgy Society will meet. Mrs. Jones will sing “Put Me In My Little Bed” accompanied by the pastor.
Thursday at 5:00 p.m. there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All wishing to become little mothers, please see the minister in his study.
This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come forward and lay an egg on the altar.
The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: “I Upped My Pledge–Up Yours”
Memory comes up in the form of thoughts and images in the present moment like any other thought activity. So memory is a form of thought. Memories are present thoughts that arise and pass in present-moment awareness. Practically speaking, memory seems to be a function that ties together, coordinates and recalls former thoughts. It appears to store concepts and images and bring them forth. Conditioned beliefs, such as the notion of being a separate self and all the related identifications, survive in memory. Without memory, they have no substance, no continuity, no real existence. So, in a sense, you can say that all our problems are due to the capacity of memory. All of our beliefs, points of view and assumptions appear to be stored there. Furthermore, the reference point of a fixed ‘I’, thinker or self only resides in memory.
Memory as a thing in itself is hard to pin down. It is like the concept of ‘the mind’. Where is ‘the mind’? There are thoughts passing through awareness, but where is ‘the mind’ apart from that? It is the same with memory. We posit such a function or entity, but where is it apart from the presently arising thoughts? It just so happens that we label some presently occurring thoughts as memories. Then we assume a past to which those memories refer. In this way, a whole conceptual world is spun up in thoughts. But they are all occurring here and now in present awareness. It is castles in air being constructed in thought. In a moment, we are conceiving of a past time, a past world, a past entity that was in that world, a memory to hold all that and ourselves as some of kind being present in the middle of all of it. But take a deeper look and see what is going on. In present awareness, present thoughts are appearing and disappearing. It is all purely conceptual, purely imagined. Time, the external world and the separate entity are all posited in thought. They are taken as real, but are not actually present as substantial things in themselves.
This is easy to see in the case of a dream. You fall into a dream state. In that dream state, you have a discussion with a friend about something you did together five years ago (in the dream). A normal conversation occurs and you and your dream friend discuss various events that happened. Appropriate memories appear to corroborate everything. When you wake up you look back and see that it was all fabricated in the mind in the moment of dreaming. There was no past at all. Not to mention that there were no real dream characters either! It was all appearances taken as real. However, awareness stands beyond, free and untouched. It is not even in the dream. The dream is in it. It suffers no limitations occurring in the dream. The awareness itself is no limited appearance in the dream. It is not any particular entity or object in the dream. It is the same with our present awareness in this apparent waking state.
Conventionally, you can say that the mind creates the notion of a substantial, independent self and that this belief is sustained in memory. There is no harm in that as far as it goes. But the truth is that it is all simply present thoughts. And there is no separate thinker or ‘me’ to be found.
Your actual identity is that space-like, utterly free awareness itself. All self-centered thoughts are baseless, as there is no one to whom they apply. See this clearly and there is really nothing else needed. It is the heart of the matter. Seeing this, suffering, doubt, seeking and personal problems vanish entirely.
I’m at the hairdresser, looking at this face with all its sagging bits that I swear weren’t there the last time I was here. I notice that no matter how I tilt my head or stretch my features, those bits stubbornly remain right there, literally in my face. The hairdresser notices, smiles knowingly, and tells me to hold still while she works on the part of my appearance she can alter.
The interpretation
The body is quite obviously aging. It seems to have accelerated lately, approaching 50. There are so many beliefs around aging. Here are two you might recognize — and it can be interesting to add your own:
Staying healthy while aging is due to how well you took care of yourself. Health aging is your achievement, unhealthy aging is your own damn fault.
The worst aspect of aging is when you become dependent on others. This must be delayed or ideally avoided at all costs.
Of course, these beliefs cause unease or even suffering. But here’s the frustrating bit: we believe we’re not supposed to have these beliefs!
Because we’re spiritually advanced enough to know we’re not the body, right? And we know that aging is part of life, not something to try to avoid or manage. And if we were truly awake we’d no longer care about bodily things and just rest in the peace of pure awareness all the time …
The inquiry — please pause at every point to check if it’s true
Is it a problem that these beliefs appear, or is the problem that we think they shouldn’t?
Do you control what you believe? Belief simply means a thought is currently accepted as true. Please look carefully. Don’t continue until the answer is clear from your own experience.
So if we say, don’t believe your thoughts, or question your beliefs — who is going to make that happen? It could happen. It does happen. But is anyone in control of it happening?
Believing something, for 5 seconds or 50 years, is spontaneous. You have no say in the matter.
No one has control over what they believe. Imagine if we all knew and lived this!
Then can our beliefs in any way define us?
What knows all beliefs as they come and go? Stop and recognize that.
Is that ever changed or affected by beliefs?
Could this unaffected, ever-present knowing be what we are?
Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106 Hammerklavier 3. Adagio sostenuto
Alfred Brendel
Brendel was born on 5 January 1931 and died on 17 June 2025.
Alfred Brendel was a Czech‑born Austrian pianist, writer, and lecturer, widely regarded as one of the great interpreters of the Austro‑German canon, especially Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, and Liszt. His playing is often described as architectural, lucid, and intellectually rigorous, with a strong emphasis on fidelity to the score rather than overt personal display.
“I’d be happy to discuss “The Rose,” though I should note that while Judy Collins did record a beautiful version of this song, it was originally written and performed by Amanda McBroom and famously recorded by Bette Midler for the 1979 film The Rose.
The song is a poignant meditation on love and its challenges. It uses the metaphor of a rose throughout, exploring how love can be perceived in different ways – as something that causes pain, demands too much, or seems impossible to find.
The core message is one of hope and resilience. It suggests that what might seem like an end (like a seed buried in winter) can actually be the beginning of something beautiful. The song encourages listeners not to be afraid to love, even when it feels risky or painful, because love has the power to bloom and transform, much like a rose emerging in spring.
The imagery moves from harsh descriptions of love as something that wounds or drowns, to the gentler realization that beneath the difficulties, there’s potential for growth and beauty. It’s ultimately an uplifting song about vulnerability, perseverance, and the transformative nature of love.”
Source: Perplexity.ai
What is this type of music called?
“The Rose” is typically classified as a pop ballad or adult contemporary ballad.
The song has a slow, emotional tempo with a focus on heartfelt lyrics and melody, which are hallmarks of the ballad form. It features:
A piano-driven arrangement
Emotional, introspective lyrics
A gradual build in intensity
A focus on vocal performance and expression
Depending on the version, it can also have elements of:
Soft rock (particularly in Bette Midler’s original recording)
Folk (in versions like Judy Collins’, which emphasizes acoustic instrumentation and a more intimate vocal style)
Easy listening or MOR (Middle of the Road) – terms used for accessible, melodic popular music
This style was especially popular in the late 1970s and 1980s, characterized by emotional depth, strong melodies, and production that highlighted the vocalist. Songs like “The Rose” became standards partly because they transcended genre boundaries and appealed to a broad audience through their universal themes and memorable melodies.
Heart-Posture.com could be a commitment device, to find clear words for the wordless, to disentangle the mind, to relax the me-contraction that is the root of our human suffering and sense of lack.
JannekeCello.com is intended as a hub for Janneke – the Cello Player, for her Kammer Music and teaching students on the Monterey Peninsula.
