SB 10.14.3 — Those who, even while remaining situated in their established social positions, throw away the process of speculative knowledge and with their body, words and mind offer all respects to descriptions of Your personality and activities, dedicating their lives to these narrations, which are vibrated by You personally and by Your pure devotees, certainly conquer Your Lordship, although You are otherwise unconquerable by anyone within the three worlds.

SB 10.14.4 — My dear Lord, devotional service unto You is the best path for self-realization. If someone gives up that path and engages in the cultivation of speculative knowledge, he will simply undergo a troublesome process and will not achieve his desired result. As a person who beats an empty husk of wheat cannot get grain, one who simply speculates cannot achieve self-realization. His only gain is trouble.

Never believe anyone who says we cannot change. Vision is one of the secrets of personal transformation. We are all artists, our mind is the arena of creation and vision is what we are constantly creating. What is your vision of yourself today – patient, relaxed, positive or tense, tight and negative? What do you prefer? So be creative – what does patience look like, feel like, what are you doing that is different when you are patient and you are expressing your power to …wait? Always start with vision not action. See it and you will be it. Be it and you will do it. We don’t ‘get a life’ as some would cynically tell us – we create our life.

Are your emotions easily affected by people and events? If so, then like the sea, when the weather is calm your waves roll gently. But when stormy winds blow, you become wild and out of control.

An ant is tiny beside an elephant but as soon as an ant enters the ear of an elephant it goes crazy. The elephant’s ears are so big, the elephant itself is so big and yet a tiny ant makes it go wild. In the same way, if I allow the slightest defamation of anyone go through my ears, I lose all my spirituality. I lose all my value because I start interacting with others on the basis of what I have heard about them. Pay attention to this! We have to be very, very selective in what we allow to enter our ears. Let me learn to see only virtues and specialities. Let me not concentrate on anyone’s weaknesses.

SB 10.10.18 — Saintly persons [sādhus] think of Kṛṣṇa twenty-four hours a day. They have no other interest. Why should people neglect the association of such exalted spiritual personalities and try to associate with materialists, taking shelter of nondevotees, most of whom are proud and rich?

The best solutions to problems will not be the result of hard thinking. Use your time better by creating peaceful thoughts, and problems will cease to affect you. Do not try to solve everything on your own. Leave some space for God to come and help you.

SB 10.10.13 — Atheistic fools and rascals who are very much proud of wealth fail to see things as they are. Therefore, returning them to poverty is the proper ointment for their eyes so they may see things as they are. At least a poverty-stricken man can realize how painful poverty is, and therefore he will not want others to be in a painful condition like his own.

SB 10.10.14 — By seeing their faces, one whose body has been pricked by pins can understand the pain of others who are pinpricked. Realizing that this pain is the same for everyone, he does not want others to suffer in this way. But one who has never been pricked by pins cannot understand this pain.

SB 10.10.15 — A poverty-stricken man must automatically undergo austerities and penances because he does not have the wealth to possess anything. Thus his false prestige is vanquished. Always in need of food, shelter and clothing, he must be satisfied with what is obtained by the mercy of providence. Undergoing such compulsory austerities is good for him because this purifies him and completely frees him from false ego.

SB 10.10.16 — Always hungry, longing for sufficient food, a poverty-stricken man gradually becomes weaker and weaker. Having no extra potency, his senses are automatically pacified. A poverty-stricken man, therefore, is unable to perform harmful, envious activities. In other words, such a man automatically gains the results of the austerities and penances adopted voluntarily by saintly persons.

SB 10.10.17 — Saintly persons may freely associate with those who are poverty-stricken, but not with those who are rich. A poverty-stricken man, by association with saintly persons, very soon becomes uninterested in material desires, and the dirty things within the core of his heart are cleansed away.

There is nothing more certain than that the world will continue to change. Accepting and not resisting this, is the first and most important inner skill in this frenetically changing, modern world. Life tests us every day to see how well we have developed this ability. Equally, there is nothing more real than the inner space within each of us that never ever changes. We may change our thoughts, our feelings, even our sense of who we are, but we fail to visit the unchanging centre of our own self. The ability to be in this inner space, where our peace is found, when all around would prefer chaos and crisis, is the deepest spiritual change skill. It is the eye of the storm, it is the oasis in the desert, it is the place where peace is power. Call in today. You’ll be surprised how much it can influence and change everything and everyone around you!

SB 10.10.11 — While alive, does this body belong to its employer, to the self, to the father, the mother, or the mother’s father? Does it belong to the person who takes it away by force, to the slave master who purchases it, or to the sons who burn it in the fire? Or, if the body is not burned, does it belong to the dogs that eat it? Among the many possible claimants, who is the rightful claimant? Not to ascertain this but instead to maintain the body by sinful activities is not good.

SB 10.10.12 — This body, after all, is produced by the unmanifested nature and again annihilated and merged in the natural elements. Therefore, it is the common property of everyone. Under the circumstances, who but a rascal claims this property as his own and while maintaining it commits such sinful activities as killing animals just to satisfy his whims? Unless one is a rascal, one cannot commit such sinful activities.

In prayer you communicate with God, in meditation God communicates with you.