One of the quieter ideas woven through older cosmologies is that life doesn’t happen in one fixed condition. We don’t simply arrive, settle, and remain. Instead, we move through different states of being, each with its own pressures, limitations, and possibilities. The Barddas speaks of this movement clearly: existence unfolds through distinct conditions, and growth happens because we pass between them.
What struck me when I first encountered this idea was how accurately it describes ordinary human experience, even without the language attached to it. Most of us recognise that feeling of being between things. Not who we were, but not yet who we’re becoming. Not settled, but no longer fully at home in what came before. It’s a deeply uncomfortable place to be, and modern culture tends to treat it as a problem to solve as quickly as possible.
The older view is different. It treats these in-between states as necessary.
Rather than seeing life as a single upward climb, this way of thinking recognises that awareness develops in stages. Each condition has its own kind of knowing. Each one teaches something different. And crucially, none of them can be skipped. You don’t leap straight to clarity. You pass through confusion. You don’t arrive at wisdom without first encountering friction.
In practical terms, this means that not all discomfort is a sign that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it’s a sign that something is working.
The first condition described in the Barddas is tightly bound to limitation. It’s the stage where awareness is constrained, shaped heavily by circumstance, habit, and inherited patterns. In modern terms, it’s where most of us start: defined by our environment, our upbringing, our assumptions about how the world works. There’s nothing wrong with this stage. It’s necessary. It grounds us. It gives us a sense of form.
But it’s also the stage where people can become stuck.
At some point, many experience a kind of internal pressure. The old explanations stop fully satisfying. The roles we’ve learned to play begin to feel too narrow. We sense that reality is larger than the framework we’ve been given. This is often where people feel lost, unsettled, or unmoored. From the outside, it can look like instability. From the inside, it often feels like honesty finally breaking through.
This is the second condition: the space of tension and transition.
It’s not comfortable, and it’s rarely tidy. Certainty weakens before clarity has had time to form. Questions multiply faster than answers. You may feel as though you’ve stepped out of one world without fully arriving in another. Many people try to retreat at this point, to force themselves back into old structures simply because they’re familiar.
But the older cosmology suggests that this stage isn’t a mistake. It’s a crossing.
This condition is where awareness stretches. Where contradictions can be held without immediately needing to resolve them. Where the world feels more complex, less controllable, but also more alive. It’s also where discernment begins to matter. Not everything encountered here is helpful. Not every voice deserves equal weight. Learning to navigate this stage requires patience, restraint, and a willingness to stay present even when certainty is unavailable.
Eventually, movement continues. The third condition isn’t an escape from difficulty, but a different relationship with it. Awareness becomes more spacious. There’s less urgency to define everything immediately. Less need to defend identity at all costs. You begin to act from alignment rather than reaction.
Importantly, this isn’t a permanent state of arrival. The Barddas doesn’t suggest that once you reach this condition, you’re finished. Life continues to cycle. New limitations arise. New transitions are required. The movement repeats, but each time with greater depth.
Seen this way, personal growth isn’t about chasing enlightenment or locking in a final version of yourself. It’s about learning to recognise which condition you’re currently inhabiting and responding appropriately. Sometimes the work is to accept limitation and learn within it. Sometimes the work is to endure uncertainty without rushing to false clarity. Sometimes the work is to act from a deeper, quieter centre that doesn’t need constant reinforcement.
This framework also offers compassion. If you’re struggling, it may not be because you’ve failed. You may simply be between conditions. And that space, uncomfortable as it is, is often where the most meaningful shifts take place.
The modern world is impatient with this kind of process. We like quick fixes, instant identities, and clean narratives. Older cosmologies remind us that becoming takes time, and that movement between states is not a weakness but a feature of being human.
You are not meant to stay the same.
And you are not meant to rush what is still forming.
Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is recognise where you are, stay present to it, and allow the next condition to emerge in its own time.
Ancient Whispers 
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