David Low is high on any list of local multitaskers. A Flourtown resident for the past 15 years, Low will teach five weekly sessions of “Methods of Meditation” for Mt. Airy Learning Tree (MALT) from May 1 to 29. 

Low’s colorful employment history includes author; teacher; adjunct professor at area colleges including Rutgers, LaSalle, and Rowan; dream interpreter; substance abuse counselor in both inpatient and outpatient settings for seven years; ordained interfaith minister; and juggler and wire walker for the now-defunct Hicks Brothers Circus. However, there is at least one constant in his life: a 30-year marriage to Marsha Goluboff Low, a well-known local folk musician. 

Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island, as “a skinny, asthmatic, disaffected and nerdy ADD kid,” Low spent five years living in the Siddha Yoga Ashram in South Fallsburg, New York, in the late 1980s and early '90s, studying Jungian analysis, including one year at the group’s facility in India. In 1988, he made a pilgrimage to 98 different spiritual sites (Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic/Sufi) in Central and Northern India.

“I started meditating in my sophomore year in college (Duke University),” Low told the Local last week. “I had ADHD for sure, and it calmed me down. I also had spiritual interests, which I would never admit because I presented myself very much as a hard-nosed scientific type at the time. I began having unusual 'inner experiences' right away, which kept me going. A lot of people don’t continue the practice because nothing seems to be happening. Since then, it’s been a 40-year journey, featuring three major teachers and many methods, which at this point have all now simplified into what I would call a 'non-dual stillness.'

“I definitely 'know who I am' in a way I would not if I never [mediated]. The main thing is that it has given me a philosophical perspective on lots of things. I am okay with the presence of lots of difficult things in the world which many others have trouble with. There’s also been a real expansion and enriching of reality in how I perceive it.”

Juggling careers

Low also has a private counseling practice which he calls “Spiritual Counseling” with an office at Summit Presbyterian Church in Mt. Airy. He is also the author of “Boomerang Psychosis,” a self-therapeutic book written in his mid- to late-20s, and “Universal Spiritual Philosophy and Practice,” which he calls a “spirituality textbook” that he uses with some clients. 

The local polymath is currently working on another book, “Affirming Spinoza: Control Your Emotions, Understand Your Mind, and Better Experience God.” He says it is “a self-help version of my Ph.D. dissertation about Spinoza’s theory of emotions. I hope to bring Spinoza a new audience with cartoons, statements in large print and other graphic effects, to make it fun to read. That will be the mark I leave on the world!”

Low started juggling at 17 for fun and for a couple years after college worked in small circuses and traveling stage shows, performed only in small towns all over the U.S. and Canada. “It was definitely Americana,” he said. “These days I juggle only to stay in shape and to do very-occasional charity gigs.”

His interfaith minister ordination took place two years ago. “I sensed only that it would help with the teaching I do and enhance the spiritual counseling,” he said. “I don’t wear it on my sleeve, and I am not 'Reverend David.' It has also helped with my own vision of how we are ultimately all the same. The place I went to, the New Seminary, taught that you cannot separate such ministry from activism of some kind, even if that isn’t defined in the usual way. 

“My activism would be an implicit agenda to get people to better experience the more profound dimensions of their being and the greater happiness that results. Decades ago, I was giving a presentation on a spiritual topic. Afterward, a member of the audience said that much of what I said was wrong and that 'you should go back to school.' I immediately realized that he was right.”

For more information, visit mtairylearningtree.org. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com