From Resentful To Resourceful Learning From Sita San Diego

So, we'll stop here. Okay, this is fine. My chat GPT was in the conversational mode, so it was hearing me and responding to me.

I was trying to respond. Now, conspiracy means that there is, instead of frontal attack, the defenders who are there, they are sidetracked. So Ram realised this is a conspiracy.

And at this particular point, he immediately turned back. He examined that now that deer, the demon, whatever it was, it was dead. Zabak had done his job.

But in this time, Ram had come far into the forest. He turned back and immediately started running back. But he was a long, long distance away.

And although Lord Ram is God, Leela means that he does not always act as if he is God. There are times when he reveals his divinity, but much of the time, he acts like an ordinary human being. And because demons, in general, are more powerful than human beings, and humans are less powerful, so when a demon screamed, that scream went a much longer distance.

Now, Ram couldn't scream. Now, I'll say it's not going to come. But that voice would not have gone that far.

So he ran back. Now, when Sita heard that voice, she had already become more and more anxious. At one level, she had the desire to get that deer, but there was a part of her that was also concerned.

Might Lakshman be true? Might there be some danger? And it's one thing if someone we love is in danger. It's another thing if that person, that loved one is in danger because of what we told them to do. Say, if somebody is coming from office and there's a storm.

Family member is coming from office and there's a storm. We want to know what happened. But if we ask them to go out and buy something urgently, and then the storm comes, then we think, should I have actually sent them? So, along with the fear, there was a bit of guilt also.

That I have done something wrong. And then, when Sita heard that Ram is calling out, she looked at Lakshman. She was just beside herself inside and she said, Lakshman, why are you not going to Ram's head? And Lakshman seemed completely unaffected and unmoved.

And he said, this is not Ram. This is some demon impersonating Ram's voice. And now, to some extent, Sita trusted Lakshman's judgement.

But, here she started worrying. But, why are you not hearing Ram's voice? She started thinking, if Ram is in danger, why are you not going there? Even if there's a possibility that there might be danger, just go there and see. So, here, sometimes, when we are disturbed about something, something has happened, we are disturbed, and then we tell it to someone else.

And if that person is not disturbed, the other person's intention might be, by their calmness, that we also become calm. But sometimes, the mind can work in the inverted way. First, I am disturbed about what happened, and then I am disturbed that you are not disturbed, and I tell you what happened.

If we are disturbed about something, this is terrible, and I say, why are you so worried? Their intention might be to reassure us, but it has the opposite effect. This is serious. How can you not take it serious? So, she became even more disturbed by that.

And, when she became disturbed, and Lakshman still seemed to be taking her concern seriously. And then, she somehow wanted Lakshman to do something. And, when emotions become too strong, then emotions, they don't just silence our intelligence.

Sometimes, it is that emotions can actually power our intelligence. See, what should happen is that, our emotions are naturally there, but our intelligence is also there. All of us have these two faculties, emotion and reason.

Now, ideal situations where emotion and reason, they both talk with each other internally, and then we take a wise decision, taking both into consideration. Sometimes, when the emotions become very wild, then the reason has to control the emotion. Now, don't get so worried about these things.

Now, sometimes, in this battle between emotion and reason, say, this is emotion, and say, this is reason. So, emotion may pull us in one direction, reason may pull us in another direction. And then, there is a tug of war.

But, sometimes, the emotion can become so strong, that the reason becomes tiny. And then, the emotion overpowers the reason. Now, this is, at one level, bad.

But, there is something worse. What happens is, emotion… So, here, reason is pulling in this direction, and emotion is strongly pulling in the other direction. But, sometimes, what happens is, emotion converts our reason.

That means, where emotion wants to go, reason becomes an obedient follower. That means, we start coming up with some justification for what we want to do. So, Krishna says that self-destructive desire can occupy not just our mind, but also our intelligence.

That's why, sometimes, people come up with reasons that, to other people, may seem completely ridiculous. But, to that person, it feels reasonable. Yeah, I'm giving you a reason why I'm thinking like this.

Why am I doing like this? But… So, in her case, she was trying to make sense. You know, why is Lakshman not going if Ram is in danger? And, in her despair, like somebody is drowning, for a drowning person, they will catch on, even to a straw of grass. Like that, she tried to come up with some reason.

Now, it was not so much a reason to explain why Lakshman is not going. Somehow, some reason to get Lakshman to go. And she says, if Ram is in danger, your duty is not just to protect me, it's to protect him also.

If you don't want to protect him, what could be the reason? Isn't that you have an evil eye on me? Isn't that you want me for yourself? Is it because of that, that you are letting Ram die at the hands of this demon? And, when she spoke those words, this accusation was so shocking for Lakshman. He just couldn't bear it. He… Sometimes, people when they are hit, they shrink backwards, they fall backwards.

But sometimes, words can hit harder than physical blows. Just shrank like this. Sita, you do not know what you are speaking.

But, your words are unbearable for me. Sita was so frantic with anxiety. She said, if you have such an evil eye, you will never have me.

I would rather die than ever be touched by anyone other than Ram. She was just going on and on. That's what Lakshman was speaking.

Sometimes, when we are so caught in our emotions, that we don't even notice other people's emotions. So, that was her state at that time, Lakshman said. Although, I understand that you are overcome by fear, but still, the words that you speak are no longer bearable for me.

I will go now, as you want. I cannot be here. I will go to find Ram.

And, she departed from there. Now, here, if we go downwards, the next thing that happened was Sita's accusation. Now, for anyone to be accused, it's painful.

Now, if somebody's intention is exactly the opposite of what they are trying to do, then, the accusation is even more painful to be done. And life is such that we all will be accused at times. So, Sita accused, and then Lakshman departed.

Now, was Sita wrong in accusing Lakshman? We can say, yes, it was a terrible accusation to make. But, if we go deep into that particular situation, to some extent, why she spoke what she spoke is understandable. Just because something is understandable, does not necessarily make it acceptable.

But, understand, why did she speak like this? Even Lakshman understood it. Lakshman went away from there. And, when he went away, at that time, Lakshman and Ram met in the middle.

Ram said, why you left Sita? And then, Lakshman told, in broken words, what had happened. He couldn't even speak what Sita had said. And Ram, again, now what had happened to Sita earlier, now happened to Lakshman.

Lakshman was shattered by the accusation that Sita had made. And Ram said, that, you know, she must have been too much anxious. Why did you take her words so seriously? You know, you should not have taken her words so seriously.

And then, he turned and they ran back. Now, in the meanwhile, what happened? See, Lakshman was terribly hurt. But, there is, it's important that he didn't hold it against Sita.

That, he, when they found out Sita had abducted him, he didn't say, you know, she accused me like that, sir, sir, right? He did not, later on, when eventually they were reunited, he did not ask, you know, you have not apologised for what you spoke to me till now. She did not do that. Why? See, because, see, there can be disagreements in life.

Now, how we process disagreements? This is a different topic, but I'll just quickly mention it. That, when there are disagreements, there can be disagreements over actions. That means, I think your action is wrong.

Now, when we look at people's actions, we try to understand, what is their reason? Why are they thinking like this? So, underlying their actions is their judgement. Now, I may think your judgement is wrong. So, okay, I understand why you did like this, or why you thought you should do like this.

And that was your judgement. I think your judgement is wrong. So, we can disagree about judgement also.

But, underlying judgement is motivation. Somebody can do a wrong action, and still, it's easy to overlook or forgive. We all make mistakes.

Somebody make a wrong judgement, that's also, okay, you know, maybe we all learn by experience. And you made a call, and that call was wrong at that time, judgement call. But, if we start thinking that someone is ill-motivated, like I said, somebody does something that hurts us.

They do something wrong because they are careless. So, the action is wrong because they are careless. But, you could say that they did some thinking, but their thinking was not properly informed or properly thought through.

So, okay, we need to be more thoughtful. Generally, disagreements or even hurts, not just disagreements, things which hurt, other actions which hurt us, they can be resolved if it's up to the level of judgement. But, once we start thinking that the other person is ill-motivated, once it goes to the level of motivation, this person hurt me because they wanted to hurt me.

Because they get some joy hurting me. Once things go down to that level, then relationships are very difficult to resolve. I often try to do mediation among people.

So, when one person says, you did like this, you did like that, and the other person gives an explanation why they did that. And when the second person is giving an explanation, at that time the first person starts rolling their eyes. That means you don't take that explanation seriously at all.

You are just speaking a lie. If a relationship has come to that level, then it's really alarming. It's very, very difficult to recover.

We feel, you just did it because you wanted to hurt me, and now you are coming up with some explanation. We all have probably seen when teenagers roll their eyes, all of you know what rolling eyes looks like. It basically means, I don't believe you, I don't care what you are saying.

So, now what happened was, although the words that Lakshman heard from Sita were very hurtful, he did not let that cloud his vision of her. So, this itself is an important lesson. Now, don't see intention in words that are spoken in tension.

Don't see intention in words that are spoken in tension. We all may speak certain things. Life is difficult.

Sometimes we get provoked, we get agitated. And we all may speak some words, terrible words, but don't take them to serious. So, let them go.

So, Lakshman let them go. But at that time, we could say that Sita was left unprotected. So, was that Lakshman's mistake? You see, how one after another things start going wrong.

Now, after that, the next thing that happened was that, after Lakshman had left, now Ravan had schemed in such a way that he thought that if this deer comes and deer dances, Sita will be attracted and she will want that deer. He thought one of the two will go. Either Ram will go or Lakshman will go.

Mostly he thought Ram will go and sit. And then he will call out for him. Call out for Ram, call out for Lakshman.

And then Lakshman went away. And he was also not sure if Lakshman will go or not. If Lakshman doesn't go, he was ready to fight with Lakshman.

Because he had heard about Ram's power. Ram had single-handedly destroyed the entire regiment of the Ravanas at Janasthan. But he had not known about Lakshman's power.

He was ready with Lakshman. But Ravan started thinking that, my plan is working like a dream now. Everything is working out perfectly.

His plan was working like a dream, but it was a nightmare for Sita. So, when he came, still, he initially came in the garb of a sage. Now, his reason for the garb was that, he didn't want to raise the alarm.

He didn't want Sita to raise the alarm. He didn't want Sita to be alarmed. He actually, initially, didn't plan to abduct Sita.

His plan was that, if I just approach Sita, and if I just tell, if she comes to know that a powerful king like me is interested in her, you know, she will herself forget Ram and come with him. You know, for both. Shurpanakha earlier propositioned to Ram.

And now, Ravan would proposition to Sita. Now, for both of them, that the people they were propositioning to, Proposal is more like somebody needs to marry someone. Proposition is something more illicit.

So, the person they were propositioning, that those persons were married, that was just an insignificant inconvenience for them. It didn't matter that the demons don't care for them. But his thought was that, I can actually attract Sita to me.

So, this is like in a typical romance movie, but not in the romance movie, not the hero, but the villain comes along. So, the villain thinks, I am so handsome, I am so attractive. What girl will not be attracted to me? So, if a boy wants to woo a girl, what does the boy do? First, he starts praising her beauty.

So, initially, when Ravan came, he came in the garb of a sage. And he first maintained that garb. He said, you know, be calm.

And she said, okay, Sita saw that he is there. And Lakshman had told her, don't come out of Lakshman like that. So, he said, okay, please wait.

My husband will come back soon. And then he will serve you food. And as Ravan was watching, he had known that Sita was beautiful, he had seen her beauty before, but as he watched her more and more, his desire became insatiable, to already strong.

And then he said, I am extremely hungry, give me food right now. He said, it's like my husband will be coming soon. And then she said that.

He said, no, I am hungry. Do you want to offend a sage? Do you want your family to be cursed because a sage is being offended? No, he started preying on her vulnerabilities. Sita naturally wanted the welfare of her family.

And then she started thinking, okay, she had seen many sages before, this looks like a sage. And she herself, you see, stepped out. When she stepped out initially, Ravan was delighted.

But Ravan, he, he said, he forgot that he was dressed like a sage. And he started praising Sita's beauty in very explicit terms. Sita was taken aback.

This is not the kind of behaviour expected from a sage. This is, who is this? Who is this? And then, so Ravan, so typically, so she was taken aback, she was shocked. He says, who are you? What are you speaking, O sage? And then Ravan said, no, I am a sage.

I am not a sage. And then he started beating her. He said, actually, I am Ravan.

I am the king of demons. I have a city that is filled with gold. See, typically when a boy wants to woo a girl, what he will do is he will praise, say, her beauty.

And then he will brag about his own wealth. And then the third thing is, so he started bragging about his wealth. He was thinking Sita will be impressed.

But he went on and on speaking and Sita didn't look at all impressed. He got annoyed. So then, if somebody is bragging about themself that that person doesn't seem to be interested, what could be the reason? No, maybe that person is interested in someone else.

So, then we get into the third thing. That is, praise the girl's beauty, brag about one's own wealth and then third thing is, trash the competition. So, he started criticising Ram.

Ram is just a worthless beggar. What can he give you? He can give you nothing. I can give you the wealth of the whole universe.

You will become my chief queen. Now, Sita initially was allowed to see that this is Ram and he was bragging. But when he started criticising Ram, she just became disgusted.

She became enraged. She started turning back, again going to the protected circle. But Ram saw that his words were not having any effect.

And that's the time he swooped down on her and he caught her. And he caught her. His plan was, if his seduction didn't work, then he will use abduction.

So, he abducted her. And then he started dragging her. He had his chariot nearby.

He summoned his chariot. Chariot came and they got on the chariot. Now, as Sita was being abducted, she realised that what is happening is horrible.

She started calling out, screaming for help. And as she was screaming for help, at that time, she saw somebody over there. Who was that? Jatayu.

Now, she was a warrior princess. As a warrior princess, she could assess the strength of different people. So now, here, if you go down in the sequence, what had happened was, Lakshman had departed.

You could say, now, then Sita came out of the circle. So, we could say, maybe this was a mistake. We will look back later to see what is a mistake and what is not a mistake.

But the key point over here is, that this is what happened. Sita came out and then she was abducted. And now, she was a warrior queen.

And although she was, she was panicky. She is being abducted. But she quickly assessed that Jatayu will not be a match to Ravan.

Jatayu was powerful, but he was still old. And she said, Jatayu. She called out Jatayu.

Please don't try to stop Ravan. Please just inform Ram. That I have been abducted.

Now, she wanted to make sure that Ram knows where I have gone. That what has happened to me. It was not just when she was telling him, it was not just that Ram should come and protect me for her own safety.

She also wanted Ram to know. See, when someone has disappeared, and you have no clue where they have gone, then the anxiety is so much more, because we just don't know what to do. If we know what to do, then at least some level the anxiety is mitigated.

So then, but to her dismay, Jatayu did seem to listen to her. Jatayu sprang up. And he confronted Ravan.

Ravan just neglected this. Who is this boy, vulture? I don't care about him. Jatayu tried to speak some good sense to Ravan.

But Ravan was beyond hearing any good sense. Then Jatayu attacked Ravan. And initially Ravan thought this boy is insignificant and neglected the attack.

But Jatayu fought fiercely. That's the whole enormous story about what happened. Extraordinary story.

Jatayu fought and initially he seemed to be winning. He fought phenomenally. And he would come down from behind.

And just attack Ravan with his talons, with his beak, with his claws. And he ripped his skin and Ravan started bleeding. And he would drag Ravan by the hair and pull him around.

And then fly away. And Jatayu, what he was doing, the gods from the heavens were watching. They were amazed to see Jatayu's strength.

And then, Jatayu did something extraordinary. With his powerful wings, he slammed the carriers, the mules that were driving Ravan's chariot. They just fell down.

And he knocked it off. He just ripped off the head of the charioteer. He slammed the chariot.

The chariot broke into pieces. And then now this happened. He tried to attack Ravan.

And what had happened was, he had ripped off Ravan's arms. He tried to pull off Ravan's head. But Ravan's arms reappeared.

When he realised that he can't harm Ravan, he thought, let me at least stop him. And that's why he slammed into his chariot. And what seemed to be a victory, what seemed to be at least a breakthrough, initially unfortunately worked against him.

Because Ravan came down. But now when Jatayu had to attack Ravan, he had to come down and then fly away. When he was flying there in the sky, he could just come and go by.

So he was coming and going so fast that Ravan was not able to attack. And Ravan realised that Jatayu is far more powerful than what I thought. And then he saw that I'm not able to get rid of Jatayu.

Then he started playing the waiting game. Say suppose the tennis match is going on and one player is better than the other player. The first player is winning.

But the second player knows that this first player is injured slightly. This player maybe has a lot of talent but doesn't have a lot of stamina. So deliberately what they will do is the second player will just hit the ball in one corner and the other corner and get the other player to keep running and running.

Just tyre the other person. And once the other player is tired out, then even though the other player was talented, he is not able to play. So Ravan started playing the waiting game.

Jatayu was swooping to attack Ravan and Ravan just dodged the attack. And then slowly Jatayu started getting tired. Now Sita was watching all this.

Sita had run away nearby. She was watching from the same distance. And finally to her utter horror, she saw that Jatayu swooped down.

Ravan this time dodged again. But he was noticing that Jatayu was slowing down. And because he was slowing down, he just grabbed that opportunity and started just moving aside.

He dodged the attack and immediately plunged back and swung his sword. And Jatayu's wing fell off. Somehow with one wing, Jatayu tried to fly into the sky again.

While he tried to fly into the sky, first of all he was tired, second he was moved and slowed down. And then Ravan knocked off his second wing also. And Jatayu fell down and moved away.

And then he just returned towards Sita and grabbed her. And he started fleeing. Now he started using his own mystic powers to fly from the sky, holding on to Sita.

At this point, Sita could have got angry with Jatayu. I told him, don't try to stop. Don't try to stop, just inform.

Now Jatayu was so severely wounded, she didn't even know whether Jatayu was alive or dead. Most likely he was dead. And would Ram even be informed what had happened to her? So, then here you could say, Jatayu's decision.

Was it a right or a wrong decision? Whatever has happened, had happened. As she was being taken to the sky, she was calling out to whoever might help her. But Ravan was such a powerful and dreadful being that nobody dared to intervene.

And then her screams, her lungs were getting tired. Her screams now started becoming whimpers. She couldn't even call out.

And yet, whenever she would see any being, she would try to call out. And then suddenly, she saw, as they were going through the air, she saw a small group of large monkeys over there. And she called out, help! And they looked up.

And they looked up, and they were way up in the sky, Ravan and Sita, so they couldn't do anything. But she saw they had kind looking faces. So, she thought I must do something.

So while Ravan was holding on to her, she just quickly, with her hand, she took off some of her ornaments. She tied them in a cloth. And she bundled it and threw it.

Now all this happened within moments. It was not that Ravan was slowing down his flight to do some sightseeing over there. It's just, Sita saw, and within moments she made the decision.

She had the presence of mind. And, those ornaments were collected by those monkeys. Who were those monkeys? Sugreeva.

Sugreeva, and who else was there with him? Hanuman. Hanuman, yes. So they collected, and later on, when Ravan came to search for Sita, at that time, they gave him those jewels.

And then, when Ram saw those jewels, that gave him the assurance that Sita is alive. That Sita is still waiting for him. Sita has left a clue for him.

It was a small gesture. And Sita didn't even know whether those ornaments would be found or not. But, while the gesture of dropping her ornaments, it was, it was a tiny gesture.

What is going to happen? But, it had a mighty significance. The significance was that Sita had not lost hope. When the things go wrong, the greatest danger is not that things go wrong.

The greatest danger is that, because things go wrong, we start losing hope. So Sita had not lost hope. Sita had held on to the hope that Ram will find her.

She could have got angry with herself, she could have got angry with Lakshman, she could have got angry with Jatayu. Once you want to become weak, she had so many reasons. If she wanted to let her emotions cloud her, to become, they say, resentful.

They say that. Now, in this particular situation, because was it her mistake, was it somebody else's mistake, was it Ravan's mistake? Of course, it was Ravan's evil scheme. But, when bad things have happened, when things have gone wrong, why resentful? Resentful means, oh, why did this happen? Why did this happen? Resourceful is the exact opposite.

So, Sita, in dropping those ornaments, she showed that she was resourceful. And her resourcefulness arose from her faith in Lord Ram. So, for most of us, we may not have to ever go to such a traumatic kind of situation, but we all go through situations when things do go wrong.

And then the natural reaction is to be resentful. So, I'll talk about how we can become resourceful. Now, what does resourceful mean? I'll talk about, this is the last part of the talk, I'll talk about two aspects of resourcefulness and then three steps towards being resourceful.

So, what are the two aspects? See, basically in our life, there are our situations and then there are our expectations. So, we find ourselves in a particular place. And we had some expectations when we came there.

So, we take up a job and we thought, okay, this job will be in this particular field. I got this kind of colleagues and then we find something else. So, there's often a mismatch between situations and expectations.

Now, when this happens, being resourceful means that we do one of two things. One is that we adjust situations to match expectations. That means, basically, we change the situation.

But the other is the opposite. We adjust our expectations to match the situation. So, in life, both are required at different times.

So, often in today's world, the first category is glamorised. Some people say that I never take no for an answer. I force the world to bend to my will.

I'm an achiever. I'm a winner. That's the propaganda.

And yes, if somebody does that, that kind of determination is praiseworthy. But at the same time, our greatness is seen not just by how we get the world to bend to our will. Greatness is also seen in how we can gracefully accept when the world says no.

Because nobody is powerful enough that they can get every situation to match their expectation. So, greatness involves not just a great determination to change situations, but also involves a sound intelligence to know which battle should be fought. If the situation can't be changed, let it go.

So, for all of us, being resourceful means we have these two things. Either I do this or I do that. And knowing when to do what.

Quite often, if we just leave it to our mind, we end up doing the opposite. That means, when the situation can be changed, we don't change it and we will pass it. And when the situation can't be changed, we keep trying to change it and we get frustrated.

So, these two aspects of resourcefulness. Now, adjusting the situation also requires intelligence. How to lower our expectations.

That also requires some intelligence. So, it's not that one of them is being passive. Both are resources.

Both require a certain level of resourcefulness. So, now, how can we go about being resourceful? So, I'll talk about three steps. I'll explain in terms of an acronym ART.

So, we could say that at one side is being resentful, which could be a default state. Other side is being resourceful. And you can say these three ART.

It's like a bridge we are forming. These three are like the planks of the bridge. By this, we can go from one side to the other side.

So, what are the three? First A is accept. What do we accept? Accept that sometimes our power becomes less. That sometimes, whatever be the reason.

That means, it could be my mistake, it could be somebody else's mistake. Say, I want to reach to a meeting on time. But, there is a traffic jam and I can't go.

So, my power to be punctual becomes less. So, this just happens in life. So, we need to accept that.

At this time when this has happened, rather than accepting that it has happened, why did this happen? Why did this happen? Accept that it has happened now. इश्वेतिष्यस्ताम्सिदिक्षिसोहार्ग Acceptance, such as, you know, tolerance. So, that sometimes, life doesn't go our way.

And when that doesn't go our way, our power becomes less. We all have certain amount of power in situations. Say, if we are healthy and fit, we can do a hundred things.

If suddenly we fall sick, we can barely get out of the bed. Sometimes what happens is, some people, they are sick and they are constantly complaining and blaming and grumbling and they are sick and they make their caregivers sick of them. That is not required.

Okay. We can, sometimes, life goes, we go through phases. So, how do we, how can we accept this? Krishna says, by remembering, it's temporary.

If we all go through phases, nothing in this world is permanent. So, our power has become less. It is, that phase is temporary.

But what if somebody says that, I didn't know that. Oh my. But this problem is going to be lifelong.

Then, how can we accept that? Well, what the Gita explains is, even lifelong, it is not permanent. Why? Because, our life is actually longer than this life. We are spiritual beings.

So, even if some problem is supposed to be lifelong, that is not too long because we exist longer. So, we are eternal beings. So, it's only when we think this, the situation, if we just understand it's temporary, we can bear it.

My power is lesser, the situation is temporary. Now, we say, how temporary is it? When is it going to end? Well, that we don't know. But, nothing in this world is permanent.

Now, suppose a storm comes. Now, when a storm comes, we naturally have to adjust our situations. But, does a person worry? What if the storm never ends? Now, storms can be terrible, but storms, they are not permanent.

They do not last forever. So, accept that, temporarily, my power has become less. It could happen, say, we take up a new job, and we find that the workload is very demanding, or the boss is very exploitative, or the colleagues are unhelpful, or whatever.

It's difficult. But, and we think, there's nothing I can do about it. Well, okay, my power has become less.

But, it is temporary. Nothing in this world is permanent. What happens is, when we become resentful, there are reversible situations.

And often, those reversible situations lead to reversible emotions. There is one day, something happens, I feel this job is dreadful. Especially among teenagers and young people, it happens.

There's two people who feel that they have fallen in love, and one person says, I can't live without you. I love you. And a few days later, I can't live with you.

I hate you. So, what happens is, our emotions are reversible. But quite often, if this acceptance is not there, that yeah, sometimes the other person will do something which doesn't sit well with us.

People do disagreeable things. But many times, because of this, people end up taking irreversible decisions. So, this is what we want to avoid.

Reversible situations and reversible emotions should not let us do irreversible decisions. So, accept that. That things may become, our power may become less, it's temporary.

We don't have to become hopeless. We don't have to just quit completely. We don't have to give up.

So, this long-term vision, that's what spirituality provides us, that life is far bigger. So, our life, when our power has become less, our life is not like a, it's not like a sprint. You know, if I just don't get the finish line first, I'm lost forever.

It is a marathon. And sometimes, we may fall back. But that doesn't mean we are lost.

So, first is, accept. That temporarily, my power has become less. What is the acronym we are discussing? So, yes.

So, then R. R is remember. What remember? That when our power has become less, that does not mean, we have become powerless. That our power has become less, but that does not mean, we have become powerless.

So, we always have some power now. All of us, will experience loss. That is just the nature of life.

We may lose health, we may lose wealth, we may lose some opportunities. Now, Gita talks about this in, how we can misinterpret this, 1835. Now, how, so this is the event that has happened.

Or this is the situation, in terms of earlier language. But, there is our mind's, interpretation of that situation. So, at one level, we can say, I have lost.

That's objective. Okay, this is what has happened to me. I have lost.

That's, but below that, it can be, I am lost. Now, when this happens, this is much more discouraging. I have lost means, I was trying this, it didn't work out.

I am lost means, I don't even know what I should try. I am lost. But, far more damaging is, I am a loser.

Now, I am lost means, I don't know what to try. But, I am a loser means, nothing is ever going to work for me. And this is where, this is toxic.

This is where a person goes towards, they can become so helpless, they can even become suicidal at that time. Sometimes, you know, somebody doesn't do well in exam, you know, the relationship doesn't work out, this happens, that happens. It is, things can be terrible.

Nothing is ever going to improve for me. I am powerless. Well, we are never powerless.

Our power may have become less, but we are never powerless. Now, how can we know that we are never powerless? There are two ways to understand this. One is that, one is, we talk from a psychological perspective, and another from a philosophical perspective.

Psychological perspective means, that, suppose, somebody is in a terrible situation, maybe somebody says, you know, that, ok, you know, I am in this relationship, but it is terrible, nothing seems to be working. Everything is doomed. I am completely powerless.

Ok, then we can do a thought exercise. Ok, I am in a terrible situation. I am powerless.

Ok, we can ask them, can you make things worse? They say, what? Are you foolish? Are you nuts? I am already in a terrible situation. Why would I want to make it worse? They say, no. It is not that we want to make it worse.

The question is, can we make things worse? See, no matter how bad things are, we never lose the power to make them worse. At least our relationship might be terrible. But still, we can just remove our verbal restraint for 15 minutes, and no matter how bad the relationship is, it will become 100 times worse.

So the point to be understood over here is, if we have the power to make things worse, that means we are not powerless. If we can make things worse, then we can make things better also. So the thought exercise here is, that, can I make things worse? We don't want to make things worse, but, so, ok, if I speak something that will worsen the situation, at the very least, I can make sure that I don't speak that.

So there's something I can do, by which I'm not making things worse. So even from a psychological perspective, this understanding is there that, that we are never totally powerless. So somebody will be sick in bed, being paralysed.

Now can they make things worse? They can, because they can be eating food, and they can not swallow the food, and they can gulp the food, and they can make the situation worse. Sometimes people are lying in bed, and they slash their wrists, and they make things worse. People can make things worse, isn't it? Or, as I said earlier, you can just complain and blame, and make the life of your caregivers miserable.

They can make things worse. But can they make things better? We all can. So here, at whatever the situation is, the world can make us powerless, but our mind makes us believe that we are powerless.

So, यया सौपनं भयं शोकं विषादं मदमेव चिन्नविमुञ्चति दुर्मेव तुति सापार्थ कामसी Krishna says that the mind, contaminated by the mode of ignorance, just holds on to such destructive thought patterns. Krishna says, don't let go of that. We are never powerless.

Now from a philosophical perspective, no, the point is that, we are always loved by Krishna. The Lord is always caring for us. We may have been victimised by others.

We may have made a mess of our own lives. Whatever it is, Krishna never abandons us. He is always there in our hearts.

He always cares for us. Krishna says, अप्पी चेज असी पापे भ्यसरवेर्विया पाप कुछ तमाँ सर्वं ज्यान लड़े नहीं वा विजिना संतरिश्य No one is ever abandoned by God. We may say, it is a terrible mistake.

Yes, our mistake may be terrible. But we are finite beings. As finite beings, we never have so much power that we can stop the infinite beings, infinite lovers.

Krishna may be disappointed with us because of some actions that we did. But Krishna never becomes so disgusted that he abandons us. So, the point over here is that we are never powerless.

Do you know what is this acronym? GPS. What does it mean? Global Positioning System. Yes, it also means God's Positioning System.

So now, what happens is, say the GPS has told us we are going to a particular place and GPS is going to go left and we go right. And what does GPS do? GPS says, you didn't obey me, get lost. No, the GPS never does that.

The GPS reroutes. So God is at the ultimate GPS. He has the ultimate GPS.

So we may have taken many wrong turns. Sometimes we may have taken wrong turns because of our own mistakes. Sometimes the wrong turns we have been because of otherwise misled us or mistaken.

But God never abandons us. And in this way, what happens is each one of us is always guided by God. We are never abandoned by Him.

So we have the power to remember Krishna. We have the power to pray to Krishna. We are saying, Krishna, please guide me.

What do you want me to do? Please guide me how I can serve you. So that is God's Positioning System. So we are never powerless.

Remember that we are never powerless. And what is the last part of the acronym? T. Then try whatever is in our power. In life, once I understand that I am not powerless, then I understand that something is in my power.

Let me see what is in my power. And do that. So for Sita, what was in her power? She saw someone there over there.

She dropped her GPS. So for us, something is always possible for us to do. And then we think, rather than asking the question, why did this happen to me? We change the question to, what can I do now? Krishna, the situation has come.

How can I serve you in this situation? What can I do to make things better? So even if one door gets closed, even a hundred doors get closed, somewhere or other, some small light is there. From there we can find our way ahead. So whatever is in our power, we try to do.

Sometimes when, say if you are walking on a road, and then the streetlights just go off. Now we don't have the power to turn on the streetlights. But we all can turn on our flashlight.

The flashlight is not something which can actually replace a streetlight. But the flashlight can show us one step ahead. And that flashlight is our service attitude.

Krishna, I want to serve you. Whatever the situation is, how can I serve you? So if we maintain that flashlight, one step ahead, one step ahead, one step ahead, we keep moving that one step, one step, one step ahead, and we will get to a better place. And eventually the streetlights will also come back.

So in this way, being resourceful, for Sita, Lord Ram, she was reunited after almost a year later. It took time. But she never lost hope.

She kept trying what she could, and ultimately she was reunited with Lord Ram. So for all of us, just try whatever is in our power. And how do we find out what to try? Just change this last part of me.

We always have some driving question going on in us. The question is why? Why did this happen? Why did this person do like this? Why did I do like that? Now there is a time to discuss that. But when we are in trouble, the question is what? What can I do right now? Or how can I serve right now? Sometimes when we say that don't feel like this, don't think like this, that's very difficult.

But instead of telling our emotions what not to think, what we can do is change our question. Changing our emotions is difficult. But changing our question is much easier.

So that means that Oh, I am feeling hopeless. Don't feel hopeless. It's like you tell somebody I am feeling cold.

The other person says don't feel cold. What do you mean I am feeling cold? So just telling don't feel hopeless, that doesn't really help. But what we can do? Change emotions, that's difficult.

But what we can do is we can instead change our driving question. If we just change our questions, we will find that we will be able to find some path ahead even through the darkest of situations. So I will summarise what we discussed today.

We have already discussed four points. The topic was how to go from this journey of being resentful to being resourceful. Within that, first thing we discussed was when things go wrong.

So things can go wrong because of multiple reasons. It is our mistakes, others' mistakes or just fate. These things beyond our control.

So when this happens, we discussed elaborately how this happened in Sita's case. And then we focused on how to deal with it. So we discussed three points, A, R and T. What was A? What was A? Anyone remembers? Yes.

Yeah. Yes. What is the meaning of A? Yes.

Except that sometimes temporarily our power becomes less. Temporarily. So why might it happen? It just happens.

Why does it happen, we can analyse after hours. But right now, just accept that this happens. And instead of catastrophising over it, it happened, Krishna says tolerate it.

2.14, Krishna says tolerate it. And R was? Yes. Remember.

Excellent. What do you remember? You remember, remember. What do you remember? Anyone remembers? You remember Krishna.

Yes. That's an easy answer. You can tell anyone, you cannot hold a glass.

Anyone remembers? Yes. Oh, you are powerful. Good word.

Excellent. That we are powerless, that does not mean our power, we are less. So we discussed this from both the psychological perspective that we can always make things worse, that means we can also make them better.

From philosophical perspective, Krishna never abandons us. And the last P was what? Yes. Try.

Did you try to try? He tried to give an answer. What to try? Yes, good. I think that was a good guess also.

We try whatever is in our power. So we understand that my power has become less, but I am not powerless. So whatever is in my power, we try it out.

So there we discussed this example that we may not have the power to turn on street lights, but we can turn on a flashlight. And we can find one step ahead. And that one step we keep taking, we find that a flashlight will show me the next step.

And the flashlight we turn on is the service attitude. Sevava. That means service attitude is seen by changing the question.

Not why, but what or how. How can I serve you, Krishna? What can I do in your service right now? Just change that. And even from the toughest of situations, we can find a way ahead through the darkness.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.