What Freedom Really Costs When You Stop Asking Permission

Financial freedom is not the same as true freedom. Erin Patten on surrender, permission and what it costs to stop living as who the world wants you to be.

What Freedom Really Costs When You Stop Asking Permission

For a long time I was told that metaphysics belongs behind closed doors. Fine for your private life, but it has no place in business. I am building my entire business on it anyway.

So when I sat down to record this solo episode, I wanted to talk about what that freedom actually costs. Not ten years ago. Right now, in this season. Because so many of us have been taught that financial freedom is the goal, and that once the money is right, everything else will follow. I have come to know something very different.

Everybody wants to be free. Not everybody wants what comes with it.

We are in a rare Venus retrograde right now, moving through Libra and Scorpio in a way we have not seen in years. Venus governs love, value and what we hold dear. This transit is asking all of us to go deeper, to look honestly at our lives, and to stop overriding what we already know to be true. That is exactly where freedom begins.

Financial freedom changes your bank account. True freedom changes who you answer to.

Is Financial Freedom Real Freedom?

When most of us hear the word freedom, we think about money. Paying all of our bills. Leaving work when we want to leave. Having enough in the bank that nobody can tell us what to do with our time.

I understand that definition. I lived inside it for a long time. But notice what it centers on. Our careers, our work lives, our finances and our families. It almost never centers on who we are as souls, or who we are as individuals underneath all the roles we play.

You can pay every bill and still be asking permission to be yourself. You can have the title, the house and the savings account and still feel like your life belongs to someone else. That is not a money problem. That is a freedom problem, and money alone cannot solve it.

What freedom means from a metaphysical perspective

The freedom I am talking about comes from a deep, deep knowing of self. It comes from getting quiet enough to hear what is really true for your life right now.

So much of what keeps us bound is the truth we are ignoring. The places we override ourselves. The moments we hear that intuitive voice within and talk ourselves out of it because it is inconvenient, or because someone else would not approve. Real freedom is the willingness to listen to that voice and follow it.

That requires us to turn inward. I know that phrase can sound abstract, so let me make it simple.

How I turn inward

For me, turning inward started with journaling. Just writing out how I feel, without editing it, without making it pretty.

These days, I will sometimes open an AI app and talk things through. I pontificate, I push back, I sit with it and come back to it later. Sometimes you do not have another human being to talk to in the moment. Sometimes your own inner voice feels so conflicted that a little dialogue helps you hear yourself more clearly.

From that inward focus comes something important. We start looking at our feelings. Feeling our emotions. Allowing them instead of managing them. That is how we begin to experience more and more freedom. Not from a raise. Not from a bigger account. From the inside out.

How We Learned to Ask Permission

Here is what I named on the mic, and I want to name it here too. Freedom is not someone you answer to giving you permission to take a break. That is not real freedom.

In many ways, we have been conditioned to accept that arrangement as normal. I have to call it what it is. It is a kind of enslavement. We believe we have to ask permission to speak our truth. We ask permission to take time off. As children, we asked permission to go to the bathroom.

Freedom lasted thirty minutes a day

This conditioning starts very young, in our education system. Think back to school. We had about thirty minutes a day at recess for freedom. Every other minute of the day was dedicated to performing, serving and submitting to someone else's authority.

Then we grew up and carried that same pattern into our careers. We traded the recess bell for the paid time off request. We traded the hall pass for the approval of a boss, a client or a board. Even as entrepreneurs, many of us simply moved the authority outside ourselves to the market, the algorithm or the opinions of people we admire.

I was very good at performing

I did really well in that world. I excelled in the performance space. I knew how to look the part, say the right thing and earn the gold star.

And more and more, I am being called to stop performing. To show up in my truth. To show up the way I want to show up and say what I actually want to say.

That shift does not happen because your bank balance changes. It happens when you stop handing your authority to everyone around you and start trusting the authority within you.

You do not need permission to be free.

A practice for this week

Write down three things you still ask permission for. They can be big or small. Permission to rest, to charge your worth, to say no, to change your mind. Then choose one of them and decide that you will stop asking for it this week.

Freedom Comes From Surrender

The biggest lesson of my freedom journey is this. Real freedom comes from a deep surrender. Not control. Not strategy. Surrender.

That might sound backward, especially to women who have built their lives on getting things done. But at the end of the day, our freedom comes from allowing God. Let go and let God. Or, as I always like to say, let go and let Goddess.

When everything I planned fell apart

I have always been a big planner and a big strategizer. I like having things in their place. About a year ago, much of what I had so carefully planned fell apart, one circumstance after another. It was a complete contraction of my whole life.

Those circumstances have been painful. And they have still been allowed by God.

Seeing God in the hard season

That is the part of our lives where it is hardest to see God. When we are going through a difficult season, we want to believe we are being punished. We look for what we did wrong.

But that is exactly when we are being called to draw closer. Closer to God. Closer to our own being. Closer to our own inner wisdom.

This was the season where I had no choice but to listen to my own inner voice. I had to trust that everything happening in my life was creating space for me to become all that I am and all that I want to be.

What surrender looks like day to day

Surrender is not giving up. It is giving over. It is releasing your grip on how things are supposed to go so that something greater can move through you.

It looks like praying before you plan. It looks like asking what is true for you right now, instead of what will look good to everyone else. It looks like trusting that what is meant for you will not miss you, even when the evidence is not in yet.

The freest I have ever been is when I stopped insisting on my own way.

Letting the Old Self Go

One of the real costs of freedom is the old self. I am in a shedding phase right now, and I want to be honest about what that looks like.

My romantic relationships have shifted. My work relationships have shifted. My old habits, my old ways of celebrating and my old ways of being are all having to be let go.

There is grief in it

I have to acknowledge that there is a grieving process in this. If you are in a season like this, you know it well. You have probably carried some of these habits, traits and ways of being for lifetimes.

And now, in this season and in these transits, we are being called to let those things go. We are making room to embody and experience something we have likely never experienced before. It is so good. It may be the highest experience we have ever known on this planet.

Releasing the fear of the unknown

Yet the unknown of that is scary. I have to name it for what it is. There is fear involved.

Fear is heavy. It is limiting, contracting and stifling. When we are in fear, we panic and we cannot see clearly. Sometimes we even harm ourselves because we are so scared of our circumstances.

That is the exact opposite of where we are being called to go. This next season is about expansion, growth, evolution, knowing and seeing. So the fear itself is part of what we are being asked to shed. I know it because it is me. I know it because I feel it.

Perfection was never the price of love

Along with the old self comes the perfectionism. The performance. The having it all together, looking good, looking great, being smart, saying all the right things and making everybody else happy.

I am so done with that. And I hope you are too.

We cannot make everybody happy. It is hard enough to make ourselves happy, and that should be the focus.

Right now my house is not spotless. I hurt my toe, I am busy, and I cannot get everything in order the way I usually like it. So I had to tell myself out loud, it can be messy, Erin. It is okay. You do not have to punish yourself for that. You do not have to be perfect every moment of every day.

My friend Barbara shared something on a recent episode that stayed with me. She beat herself up because she did not get her fifteen thousand steps in, on a day when she had been traveling and simply needed to rest.

There is something in our old self that believes performance and perfection are linked to love and acceptance.

That can be the furthest thing from the truth.

You Cannot Keep Spirit Out of Your Work

When I first started building a business on what people called woo woo, some people thought I was crazy. They told me metaphysics should stay private, for the spiritual people behind closed doors.

Now it is laughable to me. Because my life is this. This is my purpose.

There is no business without spirit. There is no family without spirit. There are no relationships without spirit, without source, without God. These things simply do not exist apart from it.

We were taught to separate the two

As much as we want to pretend that we can separate church and state, I do not believe we can. And I use that language loosely, because what I am talking about is not church. It is holy, and it is greater than any one institution.

I recently polled my Instagram community and asked whether they carry spirit into their work or keep the two separate. The last time I checked, it was a fifty-fifty split.

That tells me so many of us are still not allowing spirit into who we are and everything we do. Half of us are living a double life, one self for the boardroom and another for the prayer closet.

Spirit is the prerequisite

Calling spirit into all that we do is the prerequisite for life. It guides our words. It guides our actions. It guides our thoughts.

When spirit leads, whatever chaos is happening around us, I know that I am unharmed. I know that I am safe. I know that I am protected. No weapon formed against me shall prosper when I walk with God in truth.

What this looks like in business

Bringing spirit into your work does not mean preaching in every meeting. It means asking for guidance before you make the decision. It means pricing from your worth instead of your fear. It means letting your intuition sit at the table with your spreadsheet.

Before your next meeting, try asking one question. What does Spirit want said here?

Financial freedom changes your bank account. True freedom changes who you answer to.

When I am surrendered, I can hear the bill collectors call and still know that I am free. My debts are paid, in the deepest sense. And I trust that I will be given the tools to handle every practical need, through money and through other forms of provision, as this platform grows.

Free and Alone Are Not the Same Thing

In this season, I have been stripped of almost everything that used to hold me up. I want to share that honestly, because it is part of what freedom has cost me.

I once had a team of employees helping me run my business. I had caregivers in my home. I had mentors I could call for energy sessions, plus acupuncturists, massage therapists and a glam team. I had a whole circle of resources supporting me. All of that is gone.

Right now, it is just me and God. And I am actually grateful for this time.

Mother God, Father God

I like to honor both the masculine and feminine aspects of source. Mother God and Father God. The nurturing, the provision, the protection, the mothering and the holding.

Those are the things I did not perceive as a young girl. Now I have to give them to myself, especially in the moments when I feel alone and isolated.

My fallow season

I call this my fallow season. In farming, a fallow field is left unplanted for a season so the land can rest and restore itself. That is what I am doing with my being.

I am letting the land rest so I can be nurtured, loved on and aligned. So that when the season comes to do the work, I am ready. And I am realizing that this rest is the work.

If this idea speaks to you, my earlier solo episode The Great Subtraction goes deeper into what a fallow season can look like. (Link the episode in Prismic.)

The love you expected from others

As you go through seasons of seeing yourself, questioning yourself and allowing yourself, you will get an outside reflection of that inner work. When there is inner judgment, inner criticism or inner conflict, it tends to be expressed externally.

So you can be sure you will be questioned. You will be judged. You may be ridiculed, often by the people you care about most. You may even feel betrayed by those closest to you.

All of it is part of the journey of coming back to yourself. Of knowing who you are and trusting your path. The love you expected from the people who judged you is love you can give to yourself.

Being free and being alone are not the same thing.

We are never truly alone

We may be physically solo. But we always have our spirit team with us, our spirit entourage, wherever we go. We have the ancestors who prayed for us and are still praying for us. We are their answered prayer.

And of course, we always walk with God. In that is the freedom. That is why I say free and alone are not the same.

Brought to My Knees So I Could Stand

There have been moments in this season when I felt questioned and accused for the very way I live. Moments that brought me to my knees.

But they brought me to my knees so I could stand. So I could stand taller, in more truth, more freedom and more sovereignty. Every one of those moments was a test of whether I would fight for myself, or fold.

Folding can look easier. It can feel easier to give up and simply be a victim. I do not want that anymore. I want to see how great I can be. I want to see what God can do and how God shows up for me.

The path of ascension

I have always said I am on an accelerated path. I just did not know what it would cost, or what it would take.

The path of awakening is not one where people throw confetti for your good works. Often it is the opposite. It asks us not to let other people's projections make us fold. And it invites us to ask what is truly possible when everything is thrown against us.

For the first time in my life, I am trusting what I am able to create for myself, and I am not worried about what other people are saying and doing. Not romantic partners, not family, not friends, not business colleagues, not neighbors.

Instead I am asking, what do I want? What do I dream about? God, can you make my dreams even more amazing and bigger?

For the Woman Behind Closed Doors

That is what the metaphysical journey is about. It is not about the woman who hides behind closed doors. The one who pleases people and keeps all of her feelings inside, never sharing them for fear of rejection, hatred or judgment.

The woman on this journey allows. She allows herself to be seen, so that she may experience the greatest transformation, elevation and ascension possible for herself.

I would rather be misunderstood than live a double life.

The peace that comes with truth

With all of this comes a profound peace. I have spent so much of my life anxious. Questioning, self conscious, insecure, and lying to myself and others.

All of that goes away when you walk in truth. When you embody truth, there comes an unimaginable peace in your being. A knowing, a love for yourself and an honoring of yourself that nobody can take away.

A Prayer and a Question

I want to leave you with the prayer I closed this episode with.

That we may come to know ourselves so deeply, and experience freedom so vastly, that there is never any returning to the old self. Never returning to the old ways of shrinking, contorting and masking. That from here on out, our beauty is revealed, our truth is heard, and our goodness and righteousness are received and seen.

We are entering a new paradigm, and I am so grateful to be among those who get to experience it to the fullest.

And I leave you with this question to sit with.

Where are you still living as who the world wants you to be? And what would it cost you to stop?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is financial freedom the same as true freedom?

No. Financial freedom changes your bank account, and that matters. True freedom changes who you answer to. You can be debt free and still be asking permission to rest, to speak your truth or to be yourself.

What does freedom mean from a metaphysical perspective?

From a metaphysical perspective, freedom comes from a deep knowing of self and a surrender to God's will. It means listening to your intuition and following it, even when it makes no sense to anyone else.

How do I start turning inward?

Start simply. Journal about how you feel without editing it, or talk your thoughts through until you can hear yourself clearly. Then let yourself feel your emotions instead of managing them.

What does it mean that free and alone are not the same?

When you choose yourself, some people may pull away or judge you. You may be physically on your own for a season. But you are never truly alone, because you walk with God, your spirit team and the ancestors who prayed for you.

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