Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
BLACK ELKYou remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
More Black Elk Quotes
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We should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples.
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I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead – and that one was myself.
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They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear’s uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
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I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.
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When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
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Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.
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The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.
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The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other.
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Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
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Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world….
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Behold this day. It is yours to make.
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So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation’s hoop I thrust it in the earth.
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It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.
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The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
BLACK ELK