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

A man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see.

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.'

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. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.