Joseph E. Brown

Through the search for a vision, contributing with physical sacrifice and the greatest humility, it is how the individual opens itself more directly to contact with the underlying spiritual essences in the forms of the manifested world. It is in these states, reached to this degree, that meditation can be surpassed by contemplation. That is why Black Elk says that the greatest power of all in the retreat is the contact with silence … “because silence is the voice of the Great Spirit”