The Great Spirit is within all things . . .

"The Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals and the winged peoples, and He is also above all these things and peoples."

Nicholas Black Elk
Oglala Lakota

Photo: Limber Pine cones, Gem Lake and cliffs in the mist, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, May 8, 2015

All things are our relatives . . .

"Perhaps the most important reason for Hembleciya (a vision quest - crying for a dream) is that it helps us to realize our oneness with all things, to know that all things are our relatives . . .

"and then on behalf of all things to pray to Wakan Tanka that He may give to us knowledge of Him who is the source of all things."

Nicholas Black Elk
Oglala Lakota

Photos: Springtime in the Burn! Oregon Holly-grape, a bull elk with velvet on his antlers, and an exquisitely-patterned burnt tree; Fern Lake Burn, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, May 6, 2015. The fourth photo is Black Elk

The Divine Seeing occurs at the center of the human heart.

"The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye.  This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things and through which we see Him.  If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen . . . The person who is thus pure contains the Universe in the pocket of his heart."

Nicholas Black Elk

Oglala Lakota

Photo: Lower Blue Lake, San Juan Range; August 10, 2013.  I love the sense of mystical union expressed here.  

This is very similar to what Meister Eckhart said in the 14th century: "The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me. "  When we realize that we are held in the magnetic gaze of God welling up from the center of our being (experienced during contemplative prayer),  this realization IS the gaze of God, who - because of his humble self-emptying - has no "I" and who therefore exists only in the second-person as a Thou who is known by us.