There’s a moment that happens to almost everyone, usually in childhood, when you discover that water can be three completely different things.

Maybe you’re holding an ice cube, watching it melt in your palm, the solid becoming liquid right before your eyes.

Maybe you’re watching a pot boil, seeing the water disappear into steam, becoming invisible air.

Maybe you’re standing in front of a freezer, watching your breath condense, vapor becoming visible droplets.

In that moment, if you were paying attention, you learned something profound: the same substance can exist in radically different forms, each with completely different properties, behaviors, and possibilities.

Ice is hard. Water is soft. Vapor is invisible.

But they’re all water. The molecular structure hasn’t changed. Only the arrangement has shifted. Only the state has transformed.

You learned this about water.

What you didn’t learn, what nobody taught you, is that you work exactly the same way.

Welcome back to Be Water.

Last week, we explored the 70% clue, why your body and your planet share the same water composition, and why that’s not coincidence but instruction.

Today, we’re going deeper into the three states. By the end of this episode, you’ll be able to recognize which state you’re in at any given moment, and that recognition alone will change how you navigate your life.

Because here’s the thing most people don’t understand: You’re not stuck being who you are. You’re stuck in a state. And states can change.

The rigidity you think is your personality? That’s an ice state.

The adaptability you wish you had? That’s the water state, and it’s available to you right now.

The transcendent peace you’ve glimpsed in rare moments? That’s vapor state, and you can access it more consistently than you realize.

But first, you have to recognize the states themselves.

Let’s start with the one most people are trapped in most of the time.

Take a piece of ice from your freezer. Hold it. Feel it.

It’s solid. Rigid. Defined. It has sharp edges and a specific shape. If you squeeze it, it doesn’t give. If you drop it, it shatters.

Ice is strong in one sense, it holds its form. But it’s brittle in another sense, it breaks under pressure.

And here’s something crucial: Ice takes up more space than the water it came from. When water freezes, it expands by about 9%. That expansion creates pressure. That pressure cracks pipes, splits rocks, breaks foundations.

Ice is water that has stopped flowing. Ice is water that has crystallized into a fixed structure. Ice is water defending its current form against any change.

Now think about yourself when you’re in what we’ll call the ice state.

You know exactly who you are. You have fixed beliefs about yourself, about other people, about how the world works. These beliefs form a structure, an identity, a rigid sense of “this is me and that is not me.”

When someone challenges these beliefs, you don’t flow around the challenge, you resist it. You defend. You become hard. You say things like:

“That’s just not who I am”

“I could never do that”

“People like me don’t succeed at things like that”

“This is just the way I am”

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”

In the ice state, you meet obstacles with force. When life presents a problem, you try to smash through it, go head-to-head with it, prove that you’re stronger than it is.

And sometimes, like ice dropped on concrete, you shatter.

The frozen self takes up more space than the flowing self. Your problems seem bigger when you’re frozen. Your fears expand. Your identity becomes this massive, defended structure that requires constant energy to maintain.

Listen to how this feels in your body right now as I describe it: Tension in the shoulders. Tightness in the chest. Jaw clenched. Breath shallow. That’s the physical signature of ice state.

Here’s how you know you’re in ice state:

Change feels threatening instead of interesting

Other people’s perspectives feel like attacks instead of information

Your identity feels like something you have to protect

Life feels like a series of battles you’re either winning or losing

Flexibility seems like weakness

Adaptation feels like betrayal of your authentic self

You’re exhausted from holding yourself together

And here’s what most people don’t realize: Being frozen is not your natural state.

Ice is what happens when water gets cold enough that its molecules stop moving freely and lock into a rigid crystalline structure.

The frozen self is what happens when consciousness gets defensive enough that its beliefs stop flowing freely and lock into a rigid identity structure.

You weren’t born frozen. Watch any baby. They’re pure flow. They don’t have rigid beliefs about who they are or what’s possible. They’re completely adaptable, learning constantly, trying everything.

But then life starts teaching you that flow is dangerous:

You reach for something and get hurt, lesson: stay still.

You express yourself authentically and get rejected, lesson: freeze into an acceptable shape.

You try something new and fail, lesson: stick to what’s safe.

You show your true feelings and get punished, lesson: hide behind a hard exterior.

Each of these lessons is a degree of temperature drop. Each belief that “I must be THIS way to be safe” is a molecule of consciousness crystallizing into a fixed position.

Layer after layer, year after year, you freeze. Not all at once. Gradually. The way water in a pond doesn’t instantly become ice, it cools slowly, forms surface frost first, then thickens, then solidifies all the way through.

By the time you’re an adult, you might be frozen so solid you’ve forgotten you were ever liquid at all.

You call this frozen state “my personality,” “my character,” “who I really am.”

But it’s not who you are. It’s what you became when you learned that being yourself was dangerous.

Now let water from your tap flow over your hand.

It’s soft. Adaptable. Powerful yet yielding. It takes the shape of your palm, flows between your fingers, finds every available space.

If you squeeze it, it moves aside but doesn’t break. If you try to hold it tightly, it slips through. If you cup your hand gently, it rests there naturally.

Water doesn’t fight obstacles, it flows around them, over them, or waits patiently and eventually flows through them.

Water is strong in a completely different way than ice. Not rigid strength, persistent strength. Water carved the Grand Canyon. Not through force, but through consistent, patient, endless flow over millions of years.

Water fits any container without losing its essential nature. Pour it into a cup, it’s cup-shaped water. Pour it into a bottle, it’s bottle-shaped water. But it’s always water.

The water state is your natural, healthy, integrated state of consciousness.

In this state, you have a sense of self, but it’s fluid rather than fixed. You know who you are in essence, but you’re not attached to any particular form that essence takes.

You can be completely yourself in any situation while adapting perfectly to the shape of that situation.

In the water state, you:

Adapt without losing yourself. You can be professional at work, playful with children, intimate with your partner, contemplative alone, and it’s all authentically you, just expressed through different channels.

Learn constantly. New information doesn’t threaten you, it just changes your shape temporarily as you absorb it and integrate it.

Connect deeply. You can merge with another person’s experience without losing your boundaries. You flow together without becoming indistinguishable.

Move with power. Not aggressive power, persistent power. You keep moving toward your goals, finding every crack, every opening, every opportunity.

Remain clear. Like pure water, you can see through yourself. You have self-awareness. You know what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, what you’re choosing.

Find your level naturally. Water always seeks its level without effort. In the water state, you naturally gravitate toward situations, people, and opportunities that match your essence.

Feel this in your body as I describe it: Shoulders relaxed. Breath flowing naturally. Chest open. Movement feels easy. That’s the physical signature of a water state.

You know you’re in water state when:

Change feels natural, even exciting

Obstacles seem like puzzles rather than walls

You can hold strong opinions while remaining open to new information

You express yourself differently in different contexts without feeling fake

You’re energized rather than exhausted by life

Challenges make you curious rather than defensive

You trust the process even when you can’t see the destination

This is the state Bruce Lee was pointing to: “Be water, my friend.” Not ice pretending to be water. Not trying to act flexible while staying rigid inside. Actually being water. Actually flowing.

But here’s something Bruce Lee said that most people miss: “Water can flow, or it can crash.”

Even in the water state, you have two ways of moving:

The implosive path: Gentle, patient, persistent. Following the path of least resistance. Flowing around obstacles. Moving downhill naturally. Eventually arriving at the ocean through countless small choices. This is water in a river, in a stream, in a gentle rain.

The explosive path: Forceful, dramatic, destructive. Crashing against obstacles. Moving with violence. Flash floods, tsunamis, water breaking through dams. This is still water, but water in crisis, water out of balance.

Both are liquid. Both are flow. But one leads to sustainable power, and the other leads to chaos and exhaustion.

The wisdom is knowing which path you’re on and being able to choose the implosive path even when the explosive path seems faster.

Now imagine water boiling. As it reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit, something miraculous happens: the liquid transforms into gas.

The molecules don’t break apart, they’re still water But they’ve gained so much energy that they’re no longer bound to each other in liquid form. They expand. They rise. They become invisible.

Vapor is formless. Vapor is everywhere and nowhere. Vapor pervades without being seen.

You can’t hold vapor. You can’t give it a shape. But it’s incredibly powerful, steam engines drove the industrial revolution. And here’s the key: vapor is still water. It hasn’t become something other than water. It’s water in its most expanded state.

The vapor state is consciousness in its most expanded, formless, transcendent condition.

In this state, you don’t experience yourself as a separate, localized individual. You experience yourself as awareness itself, the field in which all experience appears.

This is the state mystics call unity consciousness, non-dual awareness, the witness, pure presence, enlightenment, samadhi.

It’s not a belief or a philosophy. It’s a direct experience of being consciousness observing consciousness, with no sense of separation between the observer and the observed.

In the vapor state:

You have no boundaries. Not because you’ve destroyed your boundaries, but because you’ve expanded beyond the need for them. Like humidity in air, you’re everywhere without being localized anywhere.

You’re formless but not absent. Just because you can’t be seen doesn’t mean you’re not present. Vapor is invisible but powerful, unseeable but transformative.

You contain all possible forms without being attached to any. Like clouds that can become any shape and then dissolve, you can take form and release form without believing any form is “who you are.”

You see your entire life from above. Imagine flying in an airplane and looking down at the landscape. You can see the river of your life, the mountains you’ve crossed, the valleys you’ve walked through. From cloud height, you see the whole pattern. From the ground, you only see the immediate obstacle.

You serve without attachment to outcome. Like atmospheric pressure that influences weather systems without trying to control them, you impact everything you touch simply by your presence, without needing to see results or receive credit.

Feel this, or try to feel this, as I describe it: No tension anywhere. Breath so subtle it’s barely there. Sense of expansion beyond your body. Time feels different. That’s the physical signature of vapor state, though “physical” doesn’t quite capture it anymore.

You know you’re in vapor state when:

The boundary between “you” and “everything else” becomes unclear

Time feels different, eternal present rather than past-present-future

Personal problems seem small, not because they don’t matter but because you see them in cosmic context

You feel profound peace without needing anything to change

You experience yourself as the space in which thoughts and feelings appear rather than being the thoughts and feelings themselves

Language becomes inadequate, words feel too solid to capture what you’re experiencing

Compassion arises naturally because separation has dissolved

This is the state spiritual teachers point to when they say, “You are not the wave, you are the ocean.”

But here’s what’s crucial to understand, and this might surprise you: The vapor state is not superior to the water state.

Most spiritual teachings present transcendence as the ultimate achievement, the final destination, the state you should try to reach and maintain forever. But that’s a misunderstanding.

Vapor is one state of water. Not the only state. Not the best state. Just one state.

And here’s the thing about vapor: it doesn’t stay vapor forever. It condenses. It becomes rain. It falls back to earth. It enters the river. It flows back to the ocean.

The cycle continues.

If water only existed as vapor, there would be no rivers, no oceans, no rain, no life. The beauty of water is its ability to move between all three states.

The same is true for consciousness. The goal is not to become vapor and stay there. The goal is to know that you CAN be vapor, while also being able to flow as water and recognize when you’ve frozen into ice.

The goal is mastery of phase transitions. The goal is conscious choice about which state serves the moment.

In physics, there’s something called the “triple point”, a specific combination of temperature and pressure where a substance exists as solid, liquid, and gas all at once.

For water, this happens at exactly 32.018 degrees Fahrenheit and 611.657 pascals of pressure. At the triple point, ice, water, and vapor coexist in perfect equilibrium.

You have a triple point too.

It’s that moment when you’re aware of all three states of your consciousness simultaneously:

You can see your frozen patterns (ice)

You can feel your flowing nature (water)

You can sense your transcendent awareness (vapor)

And in that moment of complete awareness, you have absolute choice about which state you’ll identify with going forward.

This is the most powerful moment in consciousness development. This is when people say things like:

“I feel like I’m at a crossroads”

“Everything is changing”

“I can’t go back to who I was, but I don’t know who I’m becoming”

“It feels like I’m dying and being born at the same time”

That’s because you are at the triple point. All three states are available. The old form is melting. The new flow is emerging. Transcendent awareness is recognizing the entire process.

And you’re being asked to choose: Will you refreeze into a new rigid pattern? Will you learn to flow? Will you expand into vapor?

Most people don’t realize this is a choice. They experience the triple point as chaos, crisis, or breakdown.

But it’s actually a breakthrough, the moment when conscious transformation becomes possible.

If you’re listening to this podcast, there’s a good chance you’re at or approaching your triple point. Something in you recognized: “I need this framework.” That recognition is the temperature rising, the pressure building, the states becoming available.

Right now, as you’re listening to this, you’re primarily in one of these three states. Let’s diagnose which one:

You’re primarily ICE if:

This episode is making you defensive or resistant

You’re thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me” or “I already know this”

You’re looking for flaws or reasons why this won’t work

You feel threatened by ideas that don’t match your current beliefs

You’re rigid about how things “should” be

Change feels dangerous

You’re primarily WATER if:

You’re absorbing these ideas naturally

You’re thinking, “This makes sense” and “I want to try this”

You’re noticing how the concepts apply to your life

New information feels interesting rather than threatening

You’re curious about what comes next

Change feels natural

You’re primarily VAPOR if:

You’re recognizing patterns you’ve already experienced directly

You’re reading this from a witnessing perspective, watching your mind process the information

You’re seeing how this framework is just one way to describe something you already know

You feel spacious and expansive while listening

The words seem to point beyond themselves

You’re aware of awareness itself

None of these is better or worse. They’re just different states with different properties and different possibilities.

But knowing which state you’re in RIGHT NOW is crucial, because the practices that work for ice don’t work for water, and the practices that work for water don’t work for vapor.

This week, your practice is The Three-State Check-In.

Here’s how it works:

Three times per day, morning, midday, evening, pause for just 30 seconds and ask yourself:

“Which state am I in right now?”

Don’t judge. Don’t try to change it yet. Just notice.

Am I rigid? (Ice)Am I flowing? (Water)Am I expansive? (Vapor)

Notice where you feel it in your body:

Ice: Tension, tightness, holding

Water: Ease, flow, movement

Vapor: Expansion, spaciousness, lightness

Keep a simple log. Just three words per day:

Morning: Ice / Water / VaporMidday: Ice / Water / VaporEvening: Ice / Water / Vapor

Do this for seven days. By the end of the week, you’ll start seeing patterns:

When do you tend to freeze?

When do you tend to flow?

What triggers an ice state?

What supports the water state?

Have you experienced a vapor state at all this week?

This awareness is everything. You can’t change a state you don’t recognize. But once you start noticing your states, they start changing naturally.

The simple act of recognition, “Oh, I’m frozen right now”, often begins to thaw.

Next week, in Episode 3, we’re diving into the mechanics of transformation itself, The Phase Transitions.

You’ll learn exactly how ice becomes water (the awakening thaw), how water becomes vapor (the expansion boil), and how vapor becomes water again (the condensation return). You’ll understand why transformation feels sudden but requires preparation, and you’ll learn how to consciously work with these transitions instead of being at their mercy.

But for this week, just practice state recognition. Three times a day. 30 seconds each time. Which state am I in?

Because that awareness, that simple, repeated recognition, is the foundation of everything that follows.

You are ice when you’re frozen. You are water when you’re flowing. You are vapor when you’re expanding.

But ultimately, you’re the consciousness that can be all three, and recognize itself in each state.

That’s what we’re learning to do.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit consciousmythos.substack.com