After the horse dance was over, it seemed that I was above the ground and did not touch it when I walked.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a transcendental feeling of being uplifted by spiritual or artistic experiences.
Black Elk's quote evokes a sense of elevation and enlightenment that can come from experiencing the beauty and rhythm of life, symbolized here by the horse dance. It suggests that moments of deep connection and joy can transport us beyond our physical limitations, allowing us to feel as though we are soaring or transcending our everyday existence.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art in education, I can use this quote to illustrate how experiences can elevate our spirits.
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.
Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire, so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.
Food is a weapon in austerity Britain. Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.
Western Christians have imagined that, at the end of the day, God is going to throw the present space-time universe into a trashcan and we'll be sitting on clouds playing harps. The ultimate future that we're promised is much more interesting than that. It's new heavens and a new Earth with new bodies to live in.
I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed.
Israel is much more effective when the Israelis are convinced that we are on the moral high ground: that we are acting not just out of might, but also out of right.
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