There is no such thing as independence without responsibility. And there is no such thing as responsibility that doesn’t have a cost. People today want their freedom for nothing: “I don’t want to work for what I have. You owe it to me.” Such is the condition and the downward trend of physical existence. Even spiritually, people want to go somewhere and get tapped on the head with a peacock feather. They want to call on Christ and say, “I’m a sinner,” and believe that they’re relieved of the irresponsible nature they live from. Think how cruel and horrible a god it would be that would indeed allow you to remain living from the same nature you are now, when all you have to do is say, “I’m sorry.” Where’s the payment in that?

The cost of independence is given to us to pay in the discovery of our secret captivity… not captives of people, places and things, but captives of an undeveloped consciousness — captives of a mind that continues to hope that chasing anything will deliver us from the payment and the pain, the taxation and vexation of the pursuit.

The sweet payment, the real beautiful cost that we have to pay, is the discovery that we have been paying our whole life for what is powerless to produce what it promises. Freedom is about dying to the belief that our unenlightened state can bring us happiness and wholeness.

So you begin to extract yourself from your self… that’s the cost… because to extract yourself from your self is to extract “you” from your future, to extract “you” from the pain of your past. You extract yourself from your self because you have seen that your self is not your self at all, and that the will of your present self is not the will of the Real Life that you long for. As that becomes clear, so does the cost you must pay for the independence that only God can grant.