Why would anyone be tempted to be discouraged?

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So why would anyone be tempted to be discouraged? What taste is there in that? Actually, the human mind is very peculiar. So sometimes, some children who are born to say, who have neglectful parents. The parents don’t pay any attention to the child unless the child starts crying.
Only when the child cries, the parents pay some attention. And what happens? The child thinks that being unhappy is the way to getting its needs met. Only when I’m unhappy and I cry, my needs will be met.
And if I’m okay, then nobody is paying attention to me. So that same kind of psychological conditioning at a subconscious level that happens in childhood, that grows up in some people who later on in their life may become hypochondriacs. People who pretend to be sick.
You say, what is the taste in pretending to be sick? But they think, when I’m sick, then people will pay attention to me. People ask me how I am, people notice me, people offer some care to me. So in a perverse sense, sometimes the mind makes us believe that our needs will be met when we are unhappy.
Similarly, when we are discouraged, then at a subtle level, we may think that people will come and talk to me, people will be nice to me, people will encourage me. It’s just a distorted way in which the mind misleads us. So basically, in the conditioned stage, we are all self-centered.
And the self-centeredness can express itself through ego, arrogance, when we tell the world how great I am, how much I have achieved, I have done this, I have done that, I have done that, I have done that. And that same ego can come in a self-centeredness, can come in a negative way, where it says, you know, how much I have suffered, this has gone, that has gone, that has gone. I am not saying that sharing our heart or sharing our troubles is necessarily a sign of ego, is necessarily self-centeredness.
In an appropriate relationship, that can help us to come closer and grow. But it can also be self-centeredness. So when we are discouraged, essentially what are we doing? We are being self-centered.
The thing you ought to ask is, oh, I have so many problems in my life. This problem, that problem, that problem. And therefore, we have been discouraged.
So the temptation to be discouraged is just another way in which we stay self-centered. And that is why people who have some cause to live for, they can persevere even with discouragement. Things go wrong, but they pick themselves up and they move on.
So if we have something to live for in our lives, then discouragement won’t get us down for long. But if we have nothing to live for, then discouragement gets us down and keeps us down. And different people can have different causes.
But ultimately, the cause that will never be thwarted is the cause of bhakti. Because that cause is transient. Sometimes some material causes we may work very hard, but we can just be irredeemably thwarted.
We may work for achieving something. Somebody wants to become a champion athlete, and they just lose their legs in an accident. They just can’t do it anymore.
So there will be Paralympics for physically especially able people. They might do something over there. But still, they cannot just… Sometimes, some material situations can permanently disable us from achieving certain material things.
So dedication to a material cause, any cause that is other than the cause of serving and pleasing Krishna, that can set us up for discouragement. But the cause of pleasing Krishna, ultimately we don’t need anything. Just by our chetasahase, Kuntamahastra says that, my dear lord, you can be served simply by consciousness.
Just by remembering me, just by praying to me, a devotee will serve. So that way, any cause bigger than ourselves can get us out of self-centeredness. And that can help us to counter discouragement.
But the biggest cause, the cause that is beyond discouragement, that is the cause of wanting to serve and please Krishna. Does this answer your question? Any other questions or comments? Yes, ma’am.