Spring Equinox and Giving

Friday is the Spring Equinox, and the the day that celebrates my 23 years around the sun, and Good Friday. I have been asking my mum about my birth today. I discovered that she was is labour with me and my brother for 24 hours. She lost consciousness right at the end, that was while my twin Seb was coming out, not me! She had to have a blood transfusion because she had lost so much blood, but she bravely refused to have a caesarian and would not take any pain killers, what a soldier! My brother and I were premature and jaundiced and had to spend the next month in hospital before my mother could take us home. She came every day to the hospital, to breast feed us through the day! I cried, apparently from the day that I emerged into the world and did not stop until I was into my sixth year. My mother remarked that I was shell shocked from our traumatic birth throughout my former years- I think she exaggerates a little. Funny talking about this event as 'our' birth- it renews the affection I have for Sebastian, my brother when I realise that we came out the womb together, and of course I am reminded an obvious point but somewhat elusive point, it was a moment that we also shred with our mother - I mean she pushed us out! Friday is therefore a celebration of the day of our physical union and I am so excited when I think of this joyous day in these renewed terms.

Talking to my mother for the first time about her experience of birth and bringing us up this morning revealed an excitement of perhaps enacting the same gift of love some day. I have no plans to have kids just yet, I must stress! I just feel comfortable with the idea, which is nice. Bringing a piece of love into the world and nurturing that through life. Reading John Coltrane's poem on the inside of the Love Supreme sleeve today I was touched by his message that The Creator creasted us with love and he says let us try to live up to that love. Isn't that beautiful? It emphasises the path of striving to be good to constantly trying to live up to His love; - a journey as it were more than a closed book. The constant effort of trying to be good through our wordly actions is an act of creation, giving thanks for our creation. Love fuels love. So our journey in life is filled with the pregnant potential to fullfill, to give to those around us and create greater joy to other on the planet, surpassing the difficulties by passing the beacon to others.

John Coltrane's Love Supreme is an act of love. I remember the first time I heard it, it was my first vinyl, given to me by my brother for my 11th Birthday. The felt tip words on the inside read "Dear Abby, With Deep Love, Your Darling Quinn." It wove a beautiful story into that weighty record, evoking a romantic reverie that excited my young imagination. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking it was so weird, but resisting my first impressions, I closed my eyes and it was the first piece of music that transported me to a totally different place. It freed me, making me a little fearful, journeying deeper into the sound was almost like a sexual transition - it was so strange a liberating. I felt the powerful potential of music. I fell in love with jazz and soul music; Doug and Jean Carn, Coldcut, Grooverider, Moodyman, Pharoah Sanders, Rotary Connection... I remember going to jam session and getting really high on the music, the ambiance and the freedom of expressing one's feelings through sound. It was incredible. I inhaled the novels of James Baldwin, set in Harlem. I fell in love with Sonny's Blues and the concept that jazz was such a powerful form of expression, of dealing with raw emotion that that some musicians had no choice but to turn to drugs to supress the emerging fears that emerged from going so deep in their inner journey. As a teenager music was so charged with emotion for me that I sympathised wholly with this concept. Yet I lost the importance of music a little later but it starts to comes back to me again now. I begin to feel raw emotion coming through me now as I listen to music, I begin to feel a precious sensitivity unveiling itself and connecting me with the fire and passion I felt as a child. I love this interconnectedness; my mother, my childhood, my first record, my brother Jez's act of giving, John Coltrane's Love Supreme, his love of the Creator, his music as an act of spiritual love to the audience, Quinn and Abby, a romantic love, my first love affair of music, a love continuum . Everything feels very connected in this sense, just being conscious of the whole pattern. I think more a more about this in view of the video link that I posted yesterday. The point about Jill Bolte Taylor experiencing all beings as energy beings, all connected through the powerful separation of the right and left side of her brain just blew my brain away! I mean thats it for me, if we are energy beings, all connected then we just need to open ourselves up connecting more with each other through love. Thats the way we communicate and understand each other. We were created by love, and we must create with love, with acts of giving and kindness, dissolving the ego.

A quote by Eckart Tolle:

As you go more deeply into this state of no-mind, as it is sometimes called in the East, you realise the state of pure consciousness. In that state you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as we as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it...It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "yourself".