The Freedom we resist for the sake of the false self - self indentity - self esteem

Humans cannot attain a state of happiness without conversion, a complete reorientation of their entire existence. It cannot be achieved by their own effort; it can only result from the supreme freedom which God bestows as soon as we cease to hedge ourselves round with self-sufficiency, isolation, and arrogance.  The question is: how can human beings cross the borderline of human limitation to that divine intimacy which calls for complete surrender, and in return gives us all the resources of the infinite?  To find the answer we must turn to Saint John the Baptist,... he confessed and did not deny...  It is not I.  We must know the truth about ourselves without equivocation; we must be brought to the point of absolute honesty before ourselves and before others.  Again and again we will be tempted to stand on the pedestal of our own self-esteem, and this temptation must be overcome at all costs. We may cavort for a time on our high horse of vanity and self-deception, but sooner or later the animal will throw us and make off leaving us stranded in the wilderness.  We must abandon the fictions we have labored to polish so as to increase their plausibility.  An honest self-appraisal combined with a sober summing-up of one's own capacities and potentialities is the first step toward truth in life.  The truth shall set you free - and freedom, in every part of life, is all that matters. -- Fr Alfred Delp, SJ in Magnificat, May 2010, p. 396

We are "called" (as in vocation) out of these false and deceptive illusions of autonomous individuality to a Freedom of and in Grace - not by anything we have done, but rather by acknowledging that the world does not revolve around "me" and instead, re-presenting the One for whom Life revolves.