"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are" ~ Bernice J Reagon

It's like music. Every step flows from every beat of your heart. You don't hear the music...you only know it's rhythm. Every move is a note. Your limbs synchronise in a powerful dance. It's a motion of intensity. The world disappears. The symphony of a rock climber is a deep experience. And so too, the motion of a mountaineer. It is an altered perspective of life.

Climbing is spiritual. It's a world of intensity and passion. It's meditation. The perpetuation of self at the mundane level culminates into psychic consummation of absolute awareness. Intense climbers achieve a state of trance. There are moments when there is nothing between the climber and his climbing surface. With tiredness and severity of the climb, the hold is out of reach, but not in the mind. Aching fingers don't give up and the body is pushed to the limits of endurance until an act beyond the ordinary is performed. This is the route to higher consciousness. The moment he is off the wall the music ends.

It's a timeless space inhabited by a few indefatigible lovers of life who ironically, live close to death. For a deeper search, climbers live in a sacred space. There is no pot of gold on the summit. There is no material motive. On the contary, there are the hardest of conditions and even danger. Driven only by spiritual reward, the climber grows in spirit. He touches his soul. The feeling is so profound that all other experiences are insignificant by comparison. It is like gaining individual salvation in a world inhabited by a special few.

There is a lot happening inside the heart of a climber. Climbing guides him to all that he seeks. The search is within. It begins from his first climb and goes on forever. The search never ends. From one route to another, the quest intensifies. All his answers lie in the sacrosanct space of climbing.

Mountaineering recognizes the concept of the wholeness of man and achieves psychosomatic sublimation through a system of physical culture. The reflection about self comes naturally. Severe climbing manifests the honest, emotional, spiritual and physical level of self. It's a search within, through the extremities outside, and the learning from a climb is invaluable.

Like a connection deep inside, a friendly patch is an instantaneous recognition of an invitation to a climber. Listening and talking to the mountain in silence, he dances to it's rhythem. He bows down to that which is bigger than himself, not in defeat but in perseverance.

The summit is a climax of emotions. The journey to the top is an endless battle between man and destiny. The might of nature is immeasurable. Climbers don't challenge the forces of nature....they only confront their strengths and weakness.

Something begins to indicate that the higher the risk, the greater is the spiritual reward. Few understand that what is considered dangerous is not suicidal but an affirmation of indomitable human strength. What is worth living for is worth dying for. Not doing what you love is like dying everyday. Death on the mountains is a one way ticket to immortality. It's the chosen road of a very few.