Darkness and Light

From my upcoming book entitled "Ethical Emergence":

After publishing his hit book "Psycho-Cybernetics" Maxwell Maltz was given a gift of a painting by the celebrated artist Salvador Dali titled “Darkness and Light”. In an interview describing it Dr. Maltz said, “In the center of this painting is a world divided into two parts. The left is a a world in shadow from frustration. Here in the middle, you have a man’s image, shrunken to the size of a small potato, moving away from reality, toward the black angel of desctruction. Below you see a ship without any sails about to capsize in the rough seas of frustration. Now, the other half of a man’s inner world is of sunlight, of coincidence. Here, man’s image is ten feet tall and is walking toward the sun. Below you see a ship in calm waters about to reach port. And what is this port? Peace of mind! We can learn to walk away from this shadow world of frustration into the dawn of a new world, through confidence.”

He went onto to say in another interview later, “Dali’s gift to me is the gift each person can give themselves. It is important that we understand that the port of peace of mind cannot be reached by moving away from reality. Any form of simple escapism can only alleviate frustration temporarily as an aspirin may alleviate the symptoms of a headache. Only by moving aggressively toward reality - which means uncovering hidden truths about yourself - can you truly have peace of mind.”