2 Corinthians 7:4 Meaning Great Is My Boldness of Speech Toward

The joy that can fill a person even in the midst of tribulation is not joy because circumstances are pleasant. That it survives hardship at all reveals its source. Ordinary happiness depends on conditions, rising when they please us and collapsing when they turn.

This deeper joy does not come to you from the world. It rises from within, from the aliveness of presence that is untouched by what is happening around you. When your sense of who you are rests in that inner depth rather than in your circumstances, you can meet great difficulty and still be joyful, because the joy never depended on the difficulty going away.

Boldness of this kind belongs to a man with nothing left to protect. Diplomacy is the ego managing an image, and when the image has gone, speech comes out straight and can afford to be affectionate without calculation.

Joy in the middle of affliction, not after it has passed, is the whole matter. The mind postpones happiness until conditions improve, and so it stays permanently postponed. Where that dependence has broken, the difficulty runs its course and the delight runs alongside it, neither one cancelling the other. What overflows was never manufactured, which is why hardship cannot drain it.