In plain words
The good lies within that very bad. Without the bad, the good cannot come. Through the weakness in your humanness you see only the bad and do not notice the good. Good and bad, hardship and happiness: the two stay together. They cannot be pulled apart. Only when hardship bears fruit does happiness come.
Pravṛtti must be turned into nivṛtti
Embodiments of Prema! You hope that the new year will give you good results. For that, you must make the efforts it needs. You must put to good use the understanding, the course, the station and the wealth that God has granted you. Lust, anger, greed, delusion, pride, envy and the rest are not given to you by God; they are formed by your food and your ways of living. All these are marks of pravṛtti. Holding jobs, ruling in high office, earning money: all these too are marks of pravṛtti. These spring from the head; sooner or later they change. But the marks of nivṛtti, which spring from the heart, are lasting, pure, fitting and simple. You keep such marks of nivṛtti within yourselves, shut them away, and scramble after pravṛtti.
It is because you scramble after pravṛtti that a good end does not come to you. All you do is the work of pravṛtti, yet what you hope for is the fruit of nivṛtti! How can that be? You must turn pravṛtti into nivṛtti. However hard you try on the path of pravṛtti, you will not find Śānti. Look at a small example: for so many years you have been feeding a stomach that has already been fed, haven't you? “Oh! We have eaten for so many days! How can we eat any more?”: does such weariness ever come over you? You eat today, and once again you strive for tomorrow. The tastes change, but the hunger does not change.
The foods are many, but the hunger is one; the ornaments are many, but the gold is one; the colours of the cattle differ, but the milk is one; the kinds of living beings differ, but the jīva is one; the schools of thought are many, but God is one. Unable to know this, men have lost their wits, and for the sake of a living have become bound to much suffering.