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.
I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.
Information work is thinking work.
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
My whole goal is to keep my spirit intact. If that doesn't happen, none of this is worth it.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.
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