The spiritual function of fierce terrain (in the apophatic tradition) is to bring us to the end of ourselves, to the abandonment of language and the relinquishment of ego. A vast expanse of jagged stone, desert sand, and towering thunderheads has a way of challenging all the mental constructs in which we are tempted to take comfort and pride, thinking we have captured the divine. The things that ignore us save us in the end.
If you are not only to taste freedom but to be freedom, you have to have an absolute fidelity to Truth, and you have to be wedded to this fidelity forever. If freedom is going to be a living and ongoing experience, the human part of you has to keep fidelity with Truth and be committed to living in that Truth. As soon as you break your fidelity to Truth, you kick yourself out of the freedom of Truth.