Black Elk

Behold this day. It is yours to make.

Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions

there can be no power in a square

But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people’s heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people’s dream that died in bloody snow.

I knew that the real was yonder and that the darkened dream of it was here.

Peace will come to the hearts of men when they realize their oneness with the universe, It is every where.

I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...

I stood upon the highest mountain of the world and I knew more than I saw, I understood more than I knew, because I was seeing in a sacred manner. And what I saw were the hoops of all the nations interlocking in on great circle.

Wherever we went, the soldiers came to kill us and it was all our own country. It was ours already when the white men made the treaty with Red Cloud, that said it would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow. That was only eight winters before, and they were chasing us now because we remembered and they forgot.

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

Know the Power that is Peace.

At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.

Perhaps you have noticed that even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways.

There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which... is within the souls of men.

It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.