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They say in the bardo there is nothing to fear because it is all a projection of your own mind.
As a Dharma practitioner and a psychotherapist, I appreciate that both fields share the same goal of reclaiming our projections and seeing our lives as unfiltered as possible. The bardo teachings offer insights that can be helpful during difficult times.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the in-between state one experiences after death and before the next life. There are five other bardos: life, meditation, dream, dying, and Dharmata (luminous nature of reality).
Chogyäm Trungpa Rinpoche suggests:
“Bardo is a Tibetan word: bar means ‘in-between’ or, you could say, ‘no-man’s-land,’ and do is like a tower or an island in that no-man’s land. It’s like a flowing river which belongs neither to the other shore nor to this shore, but there is a little island in the middle, in between. In other words, it is present experience, the immediate experience of nowness—where you are, where you’re at. That is the basic idea of bardo.” (pp. 3-4, Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos)
We have all been on this island between two shores—having left one shore but not yet reached the other. Bardo can apply to any experience: a life, a day, lunch with a friend. But here, I would like to address the more distressing bardos we experience post-trauma, and how to work with them.
A Post-Traumatic Bardo State: “Fire Victim”
On January 8, 2025, my home burned down in the Eaton Fire of Altadena, California, along with thousands of others.
To be immediately ejected from the life I had built over decades was bewildering. In my mind, I see my home, my books, my notes from graduate school and trainings, my special objects collected from numerous travels, art made by people I love, and my garage art studio that took years to amass the supplies to make my dream shop. Now this all exists in my mind.
In the months after, I was pining for the previous shore: remembering laying on my comfy bed, staring at the geometric orange frogs woven into the Oaxacan carpet wall hanging that used to endlessly amuse me. Meanwhile, I was staying in an Airbnb that smelled slightly of mushrooms and offered nothing interesting to look at. I was in a reduced state of self, operating from my subtlest form.
As I fumbled through multiple moves and a psychedelic patchwork of interactions, I felt like a ghost in my own city. It seemed I could take several trajectories from here, a variety of farthest shores I could arrive upon from this bardo state. What became clear was that they are all just as illusory as the last iteration of “me” or “my life.”
In Tibetan cosmology, we are an integral part of the fabric of mahamudra (the illusion of reality). The body feels trauma’s reverberations. Certainly, I have felt the aftershocks of running out of my home with one change of clothes and two cats! How I saw myself and how others saw me changed in that instant—new identity unlocked: “fire victim.”
Yet some part of me continued that did not change, something indestructible. Nothing can take away our buddhanature (our essential goodness). Though, it is important to recognize that some bardos can make it very difficult to remember.
How to Work with Bardo States
1. Recognize it.
As I have become more familiar with distressing bardo states, I have noticed that signs of resistance can be indicative that we are in that liminal phase.
Losing my home may seem like an obvious entryway to a bardo state, however my initial response was denial. I remember thinking: I’ll just take a week off and then I’ll be back to normal! When there is a sense of discomfort, confusion, agitation, overwhelming emotions, and a general lack of clarity, those are indicators of a bardo state.
The tricky part is that it is not always obvious. Thoughts can collude with confusion and spin narratives around one’s short comings or those of others. We can tend to feel like we need to “fix” the situation despite there being nothing we could specifically fix at that moment. Our projections override our intuition.
In this way, a bardo state can be a rough time that feels regressive and unstable. However, if we can allow our desire for clarity to dissolve into the primordial soup, eventually it can reorganize and create a new paradigm of clarity, a way forward—a nascent sense of self we can reach out to that next shore.
2. Don’t freak out.
The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) gives instructions on how to navigate the bardo. A central message is: “Don’t freak out.” After death, we are confronted with our demons: projections of mind. They are terrifying, but cannot hurt us.
Our thoughts are manifestations of our own neurosis, or kleshas. I often remind clients that it is a part of the human experience to find ourselves in these uncertain and confusing times. How about we go easier on the self-criticism and just deal with how difficult this phase is? Transformation and growth can be slippery, difficult work. We add to our suffering by insisting that “it shouldn’t be this way.” It is the icing on the cake. We are suffering enough, but adding to that suffering is optional.
Even with these reminders, a bardo state is often a hard place to be, and our ego doesn’t usually respond well to the lack of continuity it entails. Yet it is a big part of life that Western thinking tends to ignore due to a toxic romance with the ego and insistence on constant comfort. It is a phase of significant transformation that we would likely benefit from valuing more.
When we can find more acceptance of these phases, we ease our suffering. We can let the ego know it’s okay that we are confused, and that we are going to be confused for a while—we are in a bardo state. We can also let the ego know that it will be useful once we get to the next shore. Recovery takes ego strength and its drive for stability.
3. Return to the island of “Now.”
Realizing the transparency of our projections, navigating a bardo state means accepting that we are on the island of “now.” This process is supported by training the mind to find stability in the present moment through the path of meditation. We do not know what the next shore holds for us until we get there. However, we can affect its nascency by returning (again and again) to the present throughout the turbulence of the bardo.
Fifteen months after the fires, I am still in that bardo. Perhaps I am writing this to find my own way back to now. Still surfing the waves of uncertainty toward finding a new concept of home—which often feels more like getting pummeled than surfing.
There is a lot more to explore about the bardo experience. But ultimately, being able to accept and stay with the confusion of the bardo is the key to being released from our projections and recognizing the wisdom inherent in these states.
From this place, new possibilities for freedom emerge.
~
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