Quotes from Albert Low

The good news is that we are Buddha. The bad news is that all beings are Buddha. The sickness of being human is the sickness of wanting to be unique.

The good news is that we are Buddha. The bad news is that all beings are Buddha. The sickness of being human is the sickness of wanting to be unique.

to be able to enter into the stillness that is one's own true nature, one must break up constantly the addiction and fascination with being something.

We poke the fires of negativity with memories: past failures, past conflicts, past betrayals and humiliations. Constantly we rake the coals seeking to know the self in the light and heat of their pain. The last thing people will abandon, said Gurdjieff, is their suffering.

With this turnabout the lusting after reflection, the search to grasp the absolute in transitory experience, loses its grip. One no longer experiences things as objective and independent, but as reflections within knowing. Upstream of all necessity to focus attention, all conflict becomes a dance, all opposition melts as I and the 'other' are known as two faces of one reality.

awareness is itself a solvent. Simply allowing a thought, idea, anxiety or compulsion to rest within the field of awareness will dissolve that thought, idea and so on.

Sometimes it feels as though one is surely committing spiritual suicide. It feels that all that is best in one's life is being eroded and lost. But still go on. This is faith.

The doubt sensation, also called the yearning sensation, the longing sensation, allows the mind to become more and more aroused without its resting on anything, to the point where pure awareness without content, reflection or desire can spring forth in a burst of light, an explosion of pure being.

The only way to know yourself is to be, which means to forget all that you think you are. In the Bible, God says, "Be still and know that I am God." This is what I mean by simply 'be.' This statement could easily, without loss, be reduced to, "Be still and know," or just "Be still," or, as we have just said, "Be." Being is knowing, knowing is stillness, and this still knowing, which is being without limit, some people call God.

When I am silent it seems that nothing is happening, but everything is happening. Nothing ever stops happening. Everything is happening. To see into this is a way of melting down this carapace, this shell, of what we call existence.

Don't waste your time asking somebody else's question.

On the other hand, although perhaps more rarely, happiness comes without any ego satisfaction. Monks, hermits, anchorites sometimes find this kind of happiness, but so do men and women who are simply content with what they have regardless of whether it is much or little. Ego satisfaction is a clear reflection of self, or as clear as the muddy water of experience will allow.

When we are uncertain, undecided, embarrassed, or have stage fright, we lose the sensation of self. We sometimes say after an embarrassing moment, "I was completely at sea, I was lost, I was out of my mind." and so on. If the uncertainty is great then feelings of anxiety, fear, or panic can flood in. So we develop strategies to cope with the anxiety by restoring the sensation of self. Men stroke their chins using the stubble as a kind of sandpaper. Women touch their hair.

It is no longer real, but just an illusion that I make real for my own amusement. To know the self we must make the mountains move. All we need is just an insight; not much, just a flash, a moment in which no reflection occurs. These moments go on all the time, and all the time we close up against them. We close up against a loss of self, we react, we clench, we adopt one or other strategy.

This moment of non-reflection unveils the awakening before the awakening, the moment when bodhichitta arises. An awakening up-stream of reflection, upstream of all conflict in a moment of knowing without content, it is without any awareness of knowing. One cannot even speak of 'a moment of knowing.' Knowing shines.