Everywhere is the center of the world. Everything is sacred.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the idea that every place holds significance and value, and that everything in life has its own sacredness.
Black Elk's quote suggests that no matter where one finds themselves, they can perceive it as important and central to their own experience. It highlights the interconnectedness of all things and the idea that we should recognize and honor the sacredness in our surroundings and in every moment, something that can deepen our appreciation of life.
In practice
In a speech about environmental awareness, one might use the quote to emphasize the importance of appreciating nature.
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.
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.
Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection
But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.
So many things which once had distressed or revolted him β the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move β all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.
I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another
Order is repetition of units._x000D_ Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.
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