Jim said, “I think people resist freedom because they’re afraid of the unknown. But that unknown was once very well known - its where our souls belong. The only solution is to confront them - confront yourself - with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You ARE free.”

I asked what he meant by “freedom.”

He said, “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first. You can take away a man’s political freedom and you won’t hurt him - unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him.”