Ill-health is the shrinking into the self, encapsulation; whereas True Health is Expansion, the emanation of the Soul into the world. And Music, True Music, of all modalities, most encourages – more, exhorts – Expansion.

The Veneration of Life


Health, True Health, is Knowing in the heart (for it can never be known in the brain), the answers to the two questions, really one, that confront, challenge, and terrify every human being:

Who am I? and Why am I here?

Health, True Health, is at last, the blessed, blissful, relief from anguish – from the inability, despite all our despairing endeavors, to find our Souls.

Thus Health is: I have a Soul. And more: I am Soul.

That is Who I am. And that is Why I am here. That is the purpose, the very reason, for my existence: to become aware of my Soul, to be One with It. And to manifest It into the world for the service of other souls.

This is the greatest, the most urgent, the most important, in fact, the only Real health care need of the elderly – as it is for those of every age.

The anguish of the aged is for all of us. It is most obvious, and pressing for them as they despair of their time running out before they have overcome it, before they have, at long last, found the Peace on the earth they are about to leave.

Looking back, has there been meaning to my life? Has it meaning now – and will it ever? And has it meaning to those I will be leaving behind?

Until he finds the meaning he will fear death. And he will pass that fear on to the next generation – as it was passed on to him.

So, how to find one's Soul – that is the most important question, the only Real question. And the need to answer it becomes ever more urgent with every passing year.

But how can we go inside our selves, our egos, to find our Soul when we have spent our whole lives avoiding this very process, out of the deluded fear that inside we will find not our Goodness, our Godliness, but the very opposite?

This is where Creativity, the Arts, are so important, so essential. True Art is the golden thread to the Soul. If we follow it back we find, at last, our Souls. Go first into the song you are singing, and then into its composer, go into the apple you are painting, the tree you are photographing. Find first the Soul there.

Then go into your self and find the fountainhead, the wellspring, of your Creativity  the Muse within you. And your Muse is your Soul.

And now give your Art to those who need to find their Souls. Be an example: let your Muse help them, through them first finding your soul, to then find their own.

And through this altruistic artistic endeavor, your Soul is at last content, for It has helped other Souls.

And now, at last, your anguish is over.

This is the Real health care need of the elderly: the opportunity and encouragement that, through finding their Souls through their Art, they may by altruistic service help others to find theirs.

Thus their last years may not be a meaningless, valueless wasteland, but the time of their greatest benefit to all who receive their Art.

And more than just their Art, for through it they become living examples of the Muse. As will those coming behind them who see them now not as nothings, but as Manifestations  as Epiphanies.

The True Health care needs of the elderly, as for all of us, are best served and best expressed not by getting – but by giving.

Health, True Health, by my definition, is advanced by Altruism – whenever we selflessly help another. Thus the Health care needs of the elderly are best met by encouraging them to help those coming behind them.

The deeper need is not to get love, but to give it. For Altruism is health, True Health. And the Arts can be a wonderful vehicle for Altruism.

The best way, probably the only way, to find your Soul is to altruistically help another to find his. And I believe the best means whereby this can take place is through the Arts, for they so obviously and so immediately come from the Soul.

Ill-health is the shrinking into the self, encapsulation; whereas True Health is Expansion, the emanation of the Soul into the world. And Music, True Music, of all modalities, most encourages – more, exhorts – Expansion.


(Excerpted from The Veneration of Life: Through the Disease to the Soul by John Diamond, M.D., ISBN: 1-890995-14-2, $9.95, Enhancement Books/Vital Health Publishing, March 2000)