Burnout, or a mutiny of the soul?

'What you might call a burnout, I would call a mutiny of the soul'.

A curious phrase. I had never thought about it that way.

It was what that John Patrick Morgan said to me this week on a phone call as he was doing his gardening. It's the second time I've had a conversation with him directly, and the first since my conversation last year with him nearly exactly 12 months ago.

My recent months of introspection have been far more scientific medical than spiritual. Whilst the last few years was far more about exploring the existential, 2024 has been a lot more about trying to rationalise and diagnose.

This has been necessary. Going to see doctors and consulting medical expertise is a critical part of modern society. And for a good reason too - our healthcare has vastly improved due to our better understanding of how we function as human beings.

Yet, there was a reason I turned to spiritual teachings in the first place. There are limits to the scientific - the rational can only explain so much.

Treating burnout and mental health is an unclear, often messy game. What works for one person does not work for another. For some, the answer would have been to do more exercise. For others, take more rest was what is needed.

Nothing epitomises this russian roullette more than antidepressants. It feels like taking a gambling swig of chemicals, hoping they might help. Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-antidepressants: they serve a purpose and can seriously help people. But I can't help but think that experimenting with chemicals when you are already in a difficult moment is risky. Ideally, we would have a better measure of what helps us when we are healthy. At least then if we have unhelpful side effects, we can better deal with them.

I've been extremely tired. It's hard to do anything when in such a state. I could see this as a mental burnout, or I could reframe this more spiritually. Perhaps what I am really managing is a mutiny where my own self would prefer to lay down arms rather than continue with what I am doing.

Rest is important, yet if it was the only solution I would have recovered long ago. Instead, there is a clear lack of willingness to do the things I was previously doing. My soul is refusing to cooperate - it does not want to return to my previous existence.

This weekend, I ended up going dancing a few times. I knew I would enjoy this, yet I was worried because I felt exhausted, despite a week of rest. Weirdly, after doing something I actually enjoyed, suddenly my body felt more energetic and sprightly. This was despite lacking a few hours of sleep!

Rationally, this doesn't make much sense. Doing more physical activity when tired should make one even more tired. Yet in practice it actually kicked my body back into gear. It's almost as if my spiritual self is far more happy when I do things I enjoy. Who would have thought?

This isn't a consistent thing either. If I force myself to do things like any old physical actiity that I do not want to, I won't feel particularly energised by them. My idea of fun is dancing, but running a marathon is not. There's a subtle but important difference between feeling short term lethargy and a spiritual rejection to doing an activity I genuinely do not want to do.

So what does this all mean in practice? Well, I think I need to get far more honest and radical with my life. There's no going back to 'the way things were', and pretending that I can is only prolonging my own suffering.

Being in tune with our spiritual self power allows us to let go. We follow the path life has in store for us, rather than trying to fight it.

As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.