First, we must be clear about one thing: everything "pays" for its existence. There is a natural and necessary reciprocity required by creation that all living things pay for their existence, even as they are given what they need to make this payment. When a dream that we have either dies, or is "killed" by a seemingly contradictory moment, our present level of mind directs us (in truth, drives us) to put "Humpty Dumpty" back together again. We pay for this effort to reconstruct our now shaky sense of self with time, energy, relationships, and whatever other resources are thought to be necessary to re-create what seems lost. The term that I use, "spiritual debt," refers to this fact: We have all made countless "payments" (such as this) only to find ourselves in one form of debt or another, regardless of how well things seem to go at first with our plans to regain freedom lost. The bottom line here is that nothing really changes for us other than what we find ourselves doing next to try to change things for us! The evidence is overwhelming. We are using the wrong "coin" to pay for the sense of peace, confidence, and lasting security for which we'll search.
The only way to reconcile this kind of spiritual debt is for us to awaken to the actual nature of the debtor... to become aware of that level of self that believes it can on keep on declaring "Chapter 11", restructure itself, and complete itself accordingly. While it's true that a cycle is completed each time, it's also true that a merry-go-round completes cycle after cycle - but never goes anywhere; and this is what we must see if we want to be free. Because once it becomes evident that each time we set out to save ourselves, we are only saving that same "indebted" self (that will again create debt for itself in one of a hundred "new ways") ...Then we know what we must do, we know what we must pay: we must pay with our "self."
None of us would invest with a company that always cost us more money than it made for us, once we understood the truth of that situation. The same holds true for paying off "spiritual debt." When the unwanted moment comes, whatever it may be, and there is the sudden urge to invest ourselves in the protection plan being formulated by a frustrated or fearful mind, we consciously, deliberately withdraw ourselves from that relationship. Why would we do this? Because we have seen the truth of what happens to us each time we agree to try and free ourselves through the ways proffered to us by this unprofitable self. We now see and understand the wisdom of "losing our life," in that moment in order to "gain it." This is something one must do experimentally, repeatedly, in order to see the good of no longer borrowing from a self that is essentially bankrupt to begin with. In one respect we "close the doors" on that lower "indebted" level of our self, in order to realize a whole new order of ourselves that need never borrow anything from life in order to know its full riches.
