You 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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of early visions and defining experiences in shaping one's life and purpose.
Black Elk reflects on his life's journey, highlighting the significance of an early vision he had at the age of nine, which shaped his identity and direction. He acknowledges a period of ineffectiveness until a crucial event in his life—a ceremonial dance—at the age of eighteen, suggesting that profound insights and life-changing experiences can guide and transform us into who we are meant to be.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding one's path.
I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World; the visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. 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.
The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. 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. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
And as he spoke of understanding, I looked up and saw the rainbow leap with flames of many colors over me.
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.
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.
It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live. If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved in causes which are good for others, not only for yourselves, then it seems to me that that is sufficient, and maybe what you will be is only a matter of chance.
Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier could give some advice.
Who shall enumerate the many ways in which that costly piece of fixed capital, a human being , may be employed! More of him is wanted everywhere! Hunt, then, for some situation in which your humanity may be used.
We are strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.
I've always said that at the end of the day, on a legal issue, I think a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.