Burnout – a spiritual epidemic

Aum namo bhagavate vasudevaya.

Haribol.

So, I’ve been asked to speak on the topic of burnout. Relatable? Or not? It’s actually kind of quite far out how—I just took a quick look online about how much reporting there is around the world on burnout. And it’s quite depressingly sad that it’s so common. In the last three years it’s been something people are frequently writing or reporting on. And when they have a title of “Burnout” then there are subtitles that really are quite frequent. One of them is called, “the silent epidemic.” Another one was, “the silent killer.” And yet another one which I think is very important, “the silent epidemic stealing your energy and joy.” And I think that one is incredibly relatable for most people that may have experienced what has been described.

In the beginning, people were thinking it was just like exhaustion and kind of real tiredness. But the reality is that tiredness and exhaustion actually dissipates if somebody has a good sleep or they have really, they have sufficient rest, then it’s like you get to recharge. But with burnout, that is not the case. Over time, you increasingly generally feel exhausted, or at least this is what’s reported. Overwhelmed: you start feeling overwhelmed about normal things in life. And you experience also an enduring emptiness.

Wow, this is getting kind of heavy. Shall we keep going or what?

And often it leads to a sense of emotional disconnection from people that you’re working with or your own family members. You become increasingly withdrawn and unable to really relate, or you don’t feel like anybody understands what you’re going through. They—It’s just like, wow, it becomes actually very depressive.

So, it’s not just happening in commercial workspaces, meaning somebody’s employment, it happens also within schools. Even with young people that are really trying to apply themselves, they can experience the same symptoms and the same result. But also, even just in the home, where somebody that is taking care of the household and some kids, can really get hit with it kind of really heavily.

And I think a common experience people will have in these kind of situations is like, “This is it forever.” We don’t see any hope. We don’t see any time that we’re going to get over this or come through this. It’s sort of like, “This is it forever.” And in that kind of situation, people become—there is this real feeling of hopelessness and just giving up.

So, my, of course, the way in which I’ve been trained to look at things is from a spiritual perspective. And I can see that one of the great underlying issues with this experience of burnout, it has to do with this very important word, “purpose.” What is my purpose? What is my life actually for? And when I feel that all of this output I’m engaged in is not connected to any higher purpose, or higher sense of direction, or value, then it becomes pretty depressing very quickly. We feel we’re just caught in this—on the treadmill. The hamster wheel’s just going around, and we’re just walking and walking and staying in the same place. We’re not really going anywhere. So that’s really something that is often not addressed in attempts to deal with burnout, extreme burnout, is this question of purpose.

And one of the reasons people have difficulty, professionals in the mental health space have difficulty, is because they don’t feel that it’s right for them to sort of try to dictate or impose what is the purpose of your life, what is the purpose for everything that you’re doing. That seems like something more connected with the religious sort of sphere, or the spiritual sort of sphere. And so there is this hesitancy, and understandably, for people to start going into that area.

The time in which we live (and we’ve talked about this often), we’re living in a time where depression, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and actual self-harm and suicide have just like skyrocketed, and people speak of it, along with burnout, as being an epidemic. And I think one of the big shortcomings is that we’re not prepared to be blunt enough and truthful enough to ask the question, “Is this a result of my life choices? Is this a result of the things that I have come to try and value and chase? Has this got anything to do with the way we’re moving as a society?” And we generally don’t want to ask those kind of questions, because we’re looking for a quick fix, a real fix, but a quick fix, without perhaps spending enough time at looking at what are the fundamental causes of this experience.

So, this time in which we live is characterized by a few different things, well actually quite a number of things, but one of them is this extraordinary rise in the use of communication technology. I mean, when I was in my 20s and 30s, if I wasn’t home when somebody called me, they didn’t get to speak to me. This is before even answering machines came in. If somebody called and you were out, then that was it. They would just have to try later.

(And it’s not like we were walking—) Everywhere we went we were expected to be reachable. If somebody wants to contact me, you’re meant to be able to—you’re meant to be there answering my call. It’s kind of like, wow, it’s really arrogant that I think everybody has to be available to me 24-7, when I decide to pick up this device and text someone or call someone, message them, that they should respond, like almost like right away. And it’s sort of like, what’s going on there? This is weird. This is putting extraordinary amounts of responsibility and stress on people where people can barely function.

If people are even in a meeting, like an important meeting, and your phone is there and of course, you’re so polite, you have it on silent, but it’s on the table, and it suddenly vibrates. Bzzzt. Or even if it’s not on vibrate and a message comes in, and you see it out of the corner of your eye, that’s it: you’re not connected to the person you’re speaking with anymore. It’s always, “Who’s that? Who’s that? What was that?” And it’s speculating about what the message was and whether it’s important. And it’s like, oh my God, that’s so disrespectful to the person sitting across from you that you’re trying to speak with, that your attention is just like cut and it’s just drifted off here. Now you’re trying to stay on track, and then you’re getting more focused, and all of a sudden, Bzzzt, another one comes in. “Oh, this might be really important. I wonder if this is this thing. I wonder if it’s that person. I wonder if it’s like this.” And then I’m fighting to get back on track and remain engaged. And all of a sudden, another one comes in. Now I know, it’s really urgent. It could be something completely stupid. But in my mind, it’s like really urgent and really important. And it’s sort of like we’re subjecting ourselves to something that is so extraordinarily artificial, and it’s not what we’re wired to be able to handle, this kind of thing.

So, apart from the rise of this extraordinarily pervasive communication technology, we are almost, always, constantly being psychologically manipulated. It wasn’t like that before. This is unique to this period of time. Everything, every app—every app is not designed as your friend and something to help you. It is designed to exploit you under a veneer that it’s there to help you. That’s just a fundamental reality.

And so there’s this like big competition between different communication platforms and different apps. The guys that are doing the designing, they’ve got their eye on the competition, and they’re thinking, “How do we get more people on our platform and how do we keep them there?” And so they actually design things to erode your independence, to erode your peacefulness. They want you addicted. They want you performative. They want you totally engaged in their platform. And they have developed such a massive toolbox of tools that are all focused on psychological manipulation, how to give you a hit, an endorphin rush or a buzz or something, a reward, give you something that stimulates your body and mind in such a way you go, “Ooh, that’s nice.” And then you want more. And you want more, and you want more, and you want more.

And so it’s sort of like, oh, boy, this is like—for thousands and thousands of years, human beings have existed without this experience. This is something incredibly new and it’s incredibly harmful.

Another thing that we are served in heaping portions: unrealistic expectations. Our life has become pervasively influenced by unrealistic expectations, what we expect is achievable from this world. What is the promises that are being made?

So we’ve also mentioned many times, the foundational principle of all advertising, all advertising, foundational principle: Every single person is empty. You are empty. You are feeling emptiness inside and you are drawn to something that can fill up the emptiness. And so advertising is the principle of taking a product or an experience and promising you that if you have this, that emptiness will go away. This will fill up your emptiness. This is the fundamental promise of advertising. Yeah, there may be some utility in the stuff that’s being offered, and there may be some nice experience attached to some of the experiences that have been marketed or sold. I’m not denying that. But the fundamental reality is, your emptiness, my product. That’s the fundamental formula. And we’re getting hit with this in ways that we never got hit with it before, in the last hundred years. We’re just getting hammered all the time by these propositions.

Another thing that has been marketed is the idea that your, and I’ll just broadly use this word, your “performance” is going to be somehow tied to your satisfaction or fulfillment. If you can just excel, you’ll become happy. Become the top of your class, become the best at what you do, and you’ll become happy. And that’s an absolute lie. You can be the best at everything and be profoundly unhappy still. But we buy into it.

And that’s tied to even body image. You have to look, within this framework of what’s called appealing or attractive. And if you do, you will become happy. You will have friends. You will find love. And it’s all tied to how this body looks. That is a disaster message. And everybody has embraced it with such eagerness.

We’ve been so confounded by the manipulation, the psychological manipulation, because we do see some immediate results. But just because you’ve now decided to wear a particular garment or to go to a cosmetic physician and have something done to your body, and you go out, and people look at you, and you notice somebody looking at you, that’s not going to make you happy. They don’t care about you. If they’re drawn to your body, it’s primarily just the motivation of lust. “How can I, wow, how could I use that for my pleasure? How could I use that for my enjoyment?” And yet we keep playing into that. Both males and females play into it.

And it’s just this idea that increased performance, or if I can excel at something, I will become more happy. And not true. Not true. There may be an initial buzz, an initial rush off it, but long term, you will not become happier by excelling, by better performance, in all fields.

Then you have this idea that somewhere, somehow, this world, there is some perfection here. And if I can just go there, if I can just get it, if I can just experience it, then I will be fulfilled. This world is not perfect and we need to get over it. We need to become more realistic. I began this little section I’m talking about, dealing with unrealistic expectations. So all of these things I’m speaking of are expectations that we have developed or we’re gravitating towards, and they are unrealistic. They will not deliver on the promise, the promise of fulfillment and happiness. We need to look at the world in a healthier and more balanced way.

The idea that perfect happiness can be found within this world—I mean, this is a little bit different from all the other things I’ve listed, although they’re sort of interconnected. There is no perfect happiness in this world. And there’s a reason for that. We’ll get to it shortly. There is a reason for it.

My life has been quite extraordinary. I started out very early on as a monk living in India, walking on the roads between holy places, studying Sanskrit texts, spending time with my spiritual teacher, being absorbed in ancient teachings, trying to experience and realize the fruit of the practice of yoga in a number of different forms. At another point in my life, I was a partner with the biggest jeweller in the world, and I used to decorate palaces. I developed a process for doing semi-precious stone mosaic. And, you know, I’d do [looks up and indicates the ceiling] This ceiling would be small, you know, a thing about two or three times the size, just massive mosaics, just gem studded, it was just… And because of that I got to fly around with these people in private jets, and hang out in their palaces and on their yachts and everything. And the amount of unhappiness is profound.

I mean, in Saudi Arabia, which is such a strict Muslim country, I go into the palace of the secretary of the sheikh that runs the country, and the guy’s wife is drunk out of her mind at 10 o’clock in the morning. She’s a full-on alcoholic. It’s like, what— These guys just spend money like it’s just raining money. They can go for a couple of weeks to Paris and put down, down payments—this is not even stuff they buy, down payments on stuff that they want to get. I’ve seen people, 250,000 US dollars, and then by the time they get back to Saudi Arabia, they decide they don’t want it anymore, and they just forego the deposit. And it’s just like, you’ve got to have a lot of money to be able to live like that and do that. And when you have the opportunity to very closely associate with and meet people in this rarefied atmosphere, the amount of unhappiness is extraordinary. It’s just like—

People think, “If I just had all of that, I would be happy.” You look at all the movie stars that die in such miserable condition, and the big pop stars and everything, if you have some insight into their actual life, it’s incredibly miserable. But you would think that if there was some perfect happiness to be had in this world, that all of these multi-millionaires and billionaires would have it. And they don’t. That should tell you that this thing that we’re chasing, perhaps it’s not available to us within the material world.

Another massive illusion is that somewhere there is some safe space in this world. Sorry. There just isn’t. I don’t mean that in a sort of like foreboding or threatening way. It’s just a fundamental reality. When we think of a safe space as a place where we’re free from having to deal with enormous challenges in life, that we’re free from anxiety and fear and a lot of other things. No, that’s not a reality to endeavour to create such a space for myself.

And of course, another one that’s attached to this, which is common in the social media circle, the idea that friends, followers, and hits will bring fulfillment. No, it’s just the opposite. The more followers that you have, the more so-called friends that you have, the more anxious you are, the more insecure you are. Because that’s just the way it works. That’s the psychology of this.

So burnout: Burnout is the natural result of aggressively chasing the dream, especially if your dream is unrealistic. If it is an unrealistic expectation of the world, then chasing the dream will deliver profound burnout. Because it’ll be like, no matter how far you’re advancing in that chase of that dream, it seems to be getting further away.

You talk to people who were ambitious business people, male or female, doesn’t matter, and the idea, if I can just get my first million. And the instant, even before, but the instant they get their million, there is an immediate experience that this is not enough. I need five million. And then I begin to plan and chase that. And as soon as I arrive at the five million mark, I’m like, whoa, this actually, it doesn’t do it. We should be looking at at least 10 million. And then when they get to 10 million, it’s not like—It is so rare that anybody would go, “Okay, that’s it. I’ve done it. Now I’m just going to live a simple life. I’ll just live off the interest.” No, the appetite is developed and I’m wanting more. And that never slows down, and that never goes away.

So when one aggressively chases a dream of material success with the idea that that will provide me fulfillment and happiness, some perfection, I’m sorry, no! You will experience in different forms a lack of fulfillment, a lack of happiness. You will experience burnout.

So, there’s a fundamental formula that exists in almost all the dharmic traditions. This is the wisdom of the East, as people in the West would think. And it’s fundamentally this. Ignorance equals pain and suffering. If in your life you are experiencing some form of pain or suffering, to that same degree, you will be embracing something that is untrue as being true.

Just look at marriage. Everybody had such a strong—and actually there’s nothing wrong with it, the desire to find perfect love. It’s a spiritual reason why we desire that. It is springing from the nature of the soul itself to experience love, to love and to be loved. But when we direct it to a material personality, it’s going to become a letdown, and it’s going to be lots of heartbreak. When somebody tells me they don’t love me anymore, how about that one? Sometimes it’s me. I decide I don’t love them anymore. Which is just—I mean, it stems from actually not knowing what is love.

And we will deal with that another time, another subject. James has kept me supplied with a whole list here.

So the fundamental idea that false messaging, there is so much of it, there is so much untruth. The spiritual perspective will clearly show that what we are facing is a spiritual epidemic. And what is the spiritual perspective?

You know, there’s this huge truth gap, or even we might call it a knowledge gap. We have so many assumptions that are based upon desires. If I desire something, I automatically think, that is good for me. Right or not? Nobody has the question, if I desire something, “Ooh, should I be desiring this? Maybe this is not going to be so good for me.” We don’t go to those places. We have this weird relationship with our mind. If our mind is desiring something intently, I think, “I need that, and if I get that, I will be happy.” And it is more often than not completely untrue. And we haven’t figured this out. Not just us. This is generational. This has been going on for a long, long time.

The great pain that spiritual teachers, those who are self-realized and God-realized, their hearts are torn with this pain of looking at the suffering of people in this world, and knowing it is all absolutely unnecessary. It is coming about by choice.

The single most foundational truth that has been ignored, that is tied to the burnout epidemic, is the fundamental truth that you are an eternal spiritual being. This body that you are residing in is not you. Just because your body is male or female or of certain age or size, that’s not you. You are the person within. And the overfocus on this false and temporary identity is one of the most foundational reasons that there is so much suffering. It is actually understood to be the root of all forms of suffering and unhappiness.

The other thing, I mean, sometimes people can resonate with that. A lot of people, immediately, when they hear that, it is like, “Ooh, yeah, I kind of thought I knew that, but I guess I didn’t. I guess I didn’t really understand.” Or maybe I’m not experiencing—I accept it, and when I’m really thoughtful or meditative, I can sort of experience that. But in my day-to-day life, that’s not part of the equation. I throw that one out the window and I embrace the body as being the self; and the mind.

We don’t know how to deal with the mind, which is another real big subject, but this was central to all yogic practice, was to appreciate how the mind is not me. Do you know how you can—? Very simple. Does your mind frequently change? It never stays in one place. It’s not eternal. It’s subject to constant fluctuation and change. The person who’s experiencing what’s going on in the mind, do you change? Do you change identity? The same person was in the baby body, and the young child body, and the teenage body, and the adult body, and the middle-aged body, and the old body. It’s the same person experiencing all that change. And similarly, it is the same person, the spiritual being, who is experiencing the constant fluctuation and change of the mind.

When you are constantly chasing the fluctuating desires floating within the mind, you cannot experience lasting happiness. That’s a little bit “Whoa!” Probably nobody will come back the next time we have a class. We don’t want to hear that. But it’s a reality. It is a truth.

So, there was a guy I sometimes mention, he was a documentarian, Adam Curtis, and he did this amazing documentary on The Century of the Self for the BBC. And he, in discussing it, that the focus of that documentary was, “the rise of the idea that has come to dominate our society. It is the belief that satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.”

And of course, that message was generated through consumer advertising and consumer economics, this idea of just trying to get you to endlessly consume stuff so the money keeps flowing, and we all get a chance to grab some of it.

A fundamental reality that we need to learn, the mind is where all the emotions take place, and we must come to embrace the reality that my emotions are not God. They are not something we should be constantly bending to and chasing.

Life is tough. Anybody disagree with that one? Life is tough. But it doesn’t mean that life has to be depressing or unfulfilling. It is all going down to your purpose in life. What is it that you see as being actually your purpose? And of course, we’re just putting forward the proposition that the cultivation of spiritual purpose will make your life very wonderful, even if it is hard, even if it’s filled with difficulty, there will be a lot of wonderful experience there.

So, if we want to avoid burnout, the spiritual advice, we must learn tolerance. So, one definition of tolerance in these ancient texts, the Vedas, “Tolerance means to patiently endure unhappiness.” Unhappiness is unavoidable. That is part of what constitutes material existence. But being able to patiently endure it, it means I must be focused on something of more importance, something that is greater. Tolerance.

Temperance. Don’t be the wild party animal. Temperance. This is a big word. And we’re not encouraged—They have a Sanskrit word, atmarama. Atmarama means one who is self-satisfied, not looking for anything in this world. They have such an extraordinary internal world that they are utterly self-satisfied. My God, such people are a danger to modern economics. They’re a danger to social media. They would be a danger to consumer economics, consumerism. But this was considered the ideal person, to become self-satisfied.

And the pathway to it, one needs to cultivate tolerance, temperance. There has to be reduced consumption to the point where you only consume what is actually necessary. These things are foundational to a happier existence.

To help guide you in making choices in your life and seeking purpose, I strongly promote the Serenity Prayer. “Grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change. Grant me the courage to change those things which I can. Grant me the wisdom to know the difference.”

We become completely focused on trying to change that which cannot change. “Why did they talk to me like that? How come they said that? How come they did that? How come this happened to me? How come that happened to me?” All the things that we can’t change, we are fixated on. And the things that we have control over, “What am I going to think about? What is going to be the content of my mind? What am I going to desire? What am I going to seek and pursue? How am I going to take somebody else’s words or actions in relation to me?” That’s all in your control. And we need to be courageous enough to live a life where we’re taking charge of that.

And of course, we know from the spiritual perspective (and I’m sorry, this is, I mean, we’ve already been going, how long have we been talking for? I can go all night. I have to be careful. Yeah. I love this stuff. This stuff is so real and it’s so important.) Each one of you can learn to live a fulfilling, an ecstatically happy life, but it must be a spiritual life.

And the foundation of a spiritual life is that, the appreciation, first and foremost, I am an eternal spiritual being. This body is a temporary residence. It has a beginning, it reaches maturity, it ages, and it dies. I never die. I can’t die. I am eternal. The body dies, yeah, sure. And if you’re going to be locked into the body, oh my gods, you’re on this trajectory that seems to go high and then, brrroooo, it’s freefall, freefall to the experience of called death. We need to be realistic about life.

The process of meditation is so critically important because it brings relief from the unhappiness of material existence. When we engage in the chanting these transcendental sounds, these spiritual sounds, these holy names, does it not make the heart feel lighter? Is there not relief from all the woes of the world that I brought in with me? It is a form of spiritual nutrition. We have this craving and we’re consuming, consuming, trying to fill up the emptiness. It is only that which is spiritual that will give us the nutrition that we actually seek.

The process of meditation will bring clarity to your life. It will empower you to step back from the raging mind and all the emotions and everything the body is hankering for, and to begin to make decisions: “Is this in my best interest? Is this going to make my life actually better?” I will develop that clarity as a result of engaging in the process of meditation.

And of course, it validates truth. When I say validates truth, all of the spiritual truth one can learn, the process of self-realization and God-realization, that experience, actual experience, will give you such clarity, and it will validate whether what you have been practicing and studying and learning is actually true or not. You will come to know that. They used to have a saying, the English, that one of my spiritual teachers would say, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” It may look amazing, but somebody could have made it with salt instead of sugar. And as soon as you taste it, it’s like, yaah! It doesn’t matter what it looks like, it’s what the taste is that will confirm whether it’s, the promise is delivered. And similarly, your own spiritual experience is what’s going to make so that you know, you actually know, you’ll see what is true and what is not.

Okay, with that we will chant a little. When we utilize spiritual sound for meditation—Meditation is not an activity of the mind. A lot of people think the mind is the central focus of meditation. No, it’s not. The mind is material. It is not spiritual. We encourage people to simply let go of everything. I use the example, it’s like you go to Fiji or somewhere, you’re in the tropics, and you walk out into the ocean on a balmy evening, and you’re wading waist deep. Then you just let go and fall back into the balmy ocean. That’s how we should approach meditation. It is an absorption of the soul. It is an absorption of the mind and of the body in that which is spiritual, spiritual sound.

So I’ll use the Mahamantra.