You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the connection between nature and the power of transformation.
In this quote, Black Elk expresses a profound understanding of the cyclical nature of life and the role of natural forces. By illustrating his journey from storm clouds to rain, he symbolizes the idea of overcoming challenges and bringing renewal, suggesting that one's purpose is to utilize their inherent gifts to effect positive change in the world.
In practice
In a conversation about resilience and personal growth, this quote can illustrate how challenges can lead to positive outcomes.
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.
Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.
Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: Don't do to other nations what we don't want happening to us. We endlessly bomb these countries and then we wonder why they get upset with us?
The past is a trail you leave behind, much like the wake of a speedboat. That is, it's a vanishing trail temporarily showing you where you were. The wake of a boat doesn't affect it's course-obviously it can't since it appears behind the boat. So consider this image when you exclaim that your past is the reason you aren't moving forward.
In mathematics and science we solve our problems as well as create them. But in art and philosophy things are not so simple.
This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.
Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to; the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense of injury. (senior devil speaking)
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