"Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Ain't No Valley Low Enough"

By my Guru’s grace, I will be returning to India for the fourth time this February. Each journey feels like a homecoming to something ancient and intimate within me. India has a way of elevating consciousness—sometimes literally, as I find myself high above sea level in the foothills of the Himalayas, but always spiritually, through devotion, ritual, and the felt presence of Grace woven into daily life.

When I am on yatra, spiritual pilgrimage, it often feels as though life cannot possibly become more luminous. Each day unfolds with peak experience after peak experience—temples, chanting, sacred conversations, moments of beauty and grace arriving almost faster than the heart can integrate them. It can be almost too much, in the best possible way. And then, inevitably, it is time to come home.

After my first trip to India, the descent was jarring. I experienced a deep depression and an intense form of reverse culture shock. Everything here felt thin and anemic by comparison—muted, hurried, lacking devotion and vibrancy. What I didn’t yet understand was that the valley was not a failure of the peak; it was its companion.

A dear friend, who had traveled to India many times before me, offered a humorous but telling piece of advice: “The cure for coming back from India is booking your next trip to India.” While returning again did soften the blow, it didn’t fully address the deeper teaching that was asking to be integrated. Over time—and through practice—I’ve been learning how to approach re-entry, and life itself, with more equanimity.

The Jivamukti Yoga Focus of the Month for January, “Dwelling Between Peaks and Valleys,” speaks directly to this truth. As Mayela Gonzalez writes, “If a peak is there, a valley is bound to be there. They exist in continuous harmony, not as opposites, but as parts of a complete totality.”

From a dualistic state of mind, we tend to label our experiences as “high” or “low,” good or bad, sacred or mundane. But yoga gently dismantles this way of seeing. In the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form, he witnesses everything contained within the One—beauty and terror, love and fear, creation and destruction. Nothing is outside of the Divine. No part of our experience is excluded.

Equanimity does not mean emotional numbness or spiritual bypassing. It means learning to ride the waves of life without being completely overtaken by them. It means observing our reactions to life’s highs and lows with mindfulness, curiosity, and compassion. We can spend our lives chasing peak experiences—even spiritual ones—but transformation does not happen by staying on the mountaintop.

Eventually, we must descend.

Our personal valleys—the shadow, grief, fear, old patterns, and unexamined emotional terrain—are not obstacles to awakening. They are the rich compost out of which wisdom and compassion grow. As Ram Dass reminds us, the challenges themselves are the stepping stones of the spiritual path.

Interestingly, climbing a mountain requires effort, discipline, and courage. In many ways, spiritual ascension is harder than staying in the comfort of the familiar. It asks us to leave what we know, to confront resistance and doubt, and to trust something larger than ourselves.

In yogic symbolism, Shiva sits in perfect stillness on the remote mountaintop—pure consciousness, vast and unmoving. Shakti, by contrast, is the fertile valley—teeming with life force, creativity, and unrestrained energy. Awakening requires both. Stillness without embodiment is incomplete; energy without awareness is ungrounded. Together, they form wholeness.

This same wisdom appears across spiritual traditions. Psalm 23 speaks not only of green pastures and still waters, but also of “the valley of the shadow of death.” The promise is not that we will avoid the valley, but that we will not walk through it alone.

Even popular music echoes this ancient truth. "Ain’t No Mountain High Enough," made popular by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, can be heard as a love song between the soul and the Divine—nothing can separate us, no height or depth, no obstacle or distance. Spiritually understood, nothing keeps us from God except the mountains of our own making: fear, doubt, and forgetting. As the song says, “If you need me, call me.” Just call the Name. As Krishna Das sings, “I have found a way to live in the presence of the Lord, and it’s all in the Name.” Through mantra, prayer, and remembrance, we reconnect again and again—whether we are standing on a peak or walking through a valley.

January invites us into this middle space. Not grasping for the highs. Not resisting the lows. But learning to dwell wisely between them. This is where practice matures. This is where devotion becomes embodied. This is where we discover that every step—up or down—belongs.

Om Gam Ganapataye Namah

May all obstacles become doorways,

Blessings and Love, 

Sharada Devi