"Pick up your cross and follow Me."
Not a burden of shame, but a burden of decision.
The cross is not imposed — it is chosen. And yet, it is not light. To pick up your cross is to lift imagination into the likeness of your desire and keep it lifted, though everything around you contradicts it.
This is the test. Not of muscle, but of faithful persistence. To hold the assumption when the world denies it. To walk as though it were true, when nothing yet echoes back your choice.
Imagination is the cross — and desire, the form it must take. To carry it is to die daily to what was, to be crucified to former beliefs, to be pierced by doubt and yet not lay it down.
And when the assumed state is fixed — nailed in consciousness — resurrection begins. But first, the hill must be climbed.