Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELKI 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.
More Black Elk Quotes
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Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
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He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real.
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Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.
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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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And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
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Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations.
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And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
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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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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people as one of many hoops that made one circle.
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Everything tries to be round.
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Perhaps you have noticed that even in the very lightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in differing ways.
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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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And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.
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Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
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If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
BLACK ELK