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DDP — Jordan Bates: How to Navigate Burnout, Heaviness & Depression
The central move in this piece is:
Don’t immediately turn suffering into a story about yourself. First experience it directly.
The author combines Buddhist “second arrow” ideas, nondual spirituality, somatic awareness, and practical self-care. Some claims are spiritual/philosophical interpretations rather than empirically established facts.
1. ALLOW IT — before trying to fix it
The first response to exhaustion is not:
“How do I get rid of this?”
but:
“Can I allow this to be here?”
That changes the relationship to suffering.
Instead of fighting:
“I shouldn't feel this.”
there is:
“This is what is arising right now.”
The distinction is subtle but powerful:
Resistance adds a second problem to the first problem.
2. Experience is FLOW, not a fixed condition
The author sees life as continuously changing energy.
Therefore:
“I am depressed”
can become:
“There are painful/heavy sensations and thoughts arising right now.”
That is a major shift in identity.
Label → identity
versus
sensation → observation → movement
The second framing leaves room for change.
3. The SECOND ARROW
This is one of the strongest Buddhist ideas in the article.
First arrow:
Something painful happens.
Second arrow:
The mind says:
“Why me?”
“This always happens.”
“I'm broken.”
“My life is terrible.”
“I'll always be like this.”
The first arrow is the experience.
The second arrow is our relationship to the experience.
And sometimes the second arrow creates far more suffering than the first.
Formula:
Pain + resistance/story/rumination = suffering amplified
4. DON'T CONFUSE THE MAP WITH THE TERRITORY
“Burnout.”
“Depression.”
“Exhaustion.”
“Tiredness.”
These words can be useful clinically and conversationally.
But they are not the experience itself.
The word “burnout” is a conceptual map.
The actual experience might consist of:
The author asks us to investigate the raw data beneath the label.
That is a very important contemplative practice.
5. FROM “I AM SUFFERING” → “SUFFERING IS ARISING”
This is perhaps the deepest psychological transformation in the piece.
Compare:
“I am exhausted.”
with:
“Exhaustion is being experienced.”
The second statement creates a tiny amount of distance between:
awareness
and
what awareness is experiencing.
That distance can create freedom.
But there is an important caveat:
This should not become denial.
If someone is genuinely depressed, medically unwell, severely sleep-deprived, or otherwise struggling, the label may be useful and professional help can matter.
6. THE WITNESS
The article repeatedly points toward:
“What is aware of the experience?”
You can notice:
thoughts
feelings
sensations
memories
fear
fatigue
But something is aware of them.
The contemplative move is to shift attention from:
What am I experiencing?
toward:
What is it that is aware of experience?
This is where the article enters nondual philosophy.
7. “TURN INWARD” DOESN'T MEAN THINK MORE
This distinction is crucial.
Turning inward doesn't mean:
“Let's analyze my thoughts for another three hours.”
Instead:
Stop following the content and notice awareness itself.
Thought:
“My life is falling apart.”
Instead of immediately investigating the thought, notice:
“There is a thought appearing.”
Then:
“What is aware of that thought?”
This resembles certain forms of self-inquiry found in Advaita Vedanta and some Buddhist contemplative practices, although the underlying metaphysics differ.
8. THE JAM-JAR PROBLEM
One of the article's best metaphors is trying to put the infinite ocean into a jam jar.
The ocean = reality as directly experienced.
The jam jar = our conceptual model of reality.
Every concept necessarily simplifies.
For example:
“This is depression.”
may be useful.
But reality is infinitely more textured than the word.
Therefore:
Concepts are useful tools—but dangerous masters.
9. “THE PROBLEM” MAY BE CREATED BY DEFINITION
The author makes a radical claim:
“All problems are defined into existence.”
This needs qualification.
Obviously, many problems exist independently of our interpretation—illness, bereavement, poverty, violence, exhaustion, etc.
But the deeper contemplative point is:
The psychological layer of “this should not be happening” is partly constructed by the mind.
There are therefore two different things:
The event
and
my interpretation of the event.
You may not control the first.
You can sometimes change your relationship to the second.
10. THE WAVE AND THE OCEAN
This is the central metaphor.
“The wave has no need to fear the ocean because the wave is the ocean.”
The individual appears separate.
But at a deeper level, the individual is an expression of the whole.
So:
wave → ocean
individual → life
self → existence
This is strongly reminiscent of nondual Hindu imagery.
In Advaita-style language:
The apparent individual self is not ultimately separate from Brahman.
But Bates' formulation shouldn't automatically be equated with classical Advaita; it is his contemporary synthesis.
11. “LIFE IS NOT PERSONAL”
This is another profound point.
We often interpret everything through:
“What does this mean about ME?”
But life isn't necessarily organizing itself around our personal narrative.
Burnout isn't necessarily:
“The universe has decided to punish me.”
It may simply be:
body + mind + circumstances + habits + environment + biology + history → present experience.
This can be strangely liberating.
Not everything that happens needs to become part of your identity.
12. CONTROL IS MUCH SMALLER THAN WE THINK
We often imagine:
“I am the controller of my life.”
But examine experience closely.
Can you completely control:
your next thought?
your next emotion?
your heartbeat?
when you become tired?
what memories arise?
what sensations appear?
what happens tomorrow?
Not completely.
Yet there is still a meaningful human-level capacity for choice.
This gives the article an important paradox:
Let go of ultimate control without abandoning practical agency.
13. SURRENDER ≠ PASSIVITY
This is extremely important.
The message is not:
“Do nothing.”
It is:
Stop fighting reality while intelligently responding to reality.
Hence the author's practical recommendations:
sleep
rest
reduce stimulation
exercise
eat well
retreat
meditate
self-care
The spiritual view and practical view are meant to coexist.
14. SYMPTOMS CAN BECOME INVITATIONS
This is one of the most useful practical ideas.
Instead of:
“Why is my body betraying me?”
ask:
“What might this experience be inviting me to change?”
Exhaustion might invite:
rest.
Overstimulation might invite:
simplicity.
Chronic busyness might invite:
boundaries.
Emotional overload might invite:
space.
This doesn't mean every symptom has a hidden spiritual message. It means symptoms can sometimes provide information worth listening to.
15. THE VALLEY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A FAILURE
This is a particularly interesting idea.
We normally imagine:
suffering = valley
awakening/healing = mountain
and therefore:
“I must escape the valley.”
The author proposes another perspective:
The valley itself is part of life.
You don't have to romanticize suffering.
But you also don't have to conclude:
“My life is wrong because I'm suffering.”
This is close to the Buddhist insight that pain is part of conditioned existence, while resistance and identification can add another layer.
16. THE MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY
The deepest formulation is:
Mountain = joy
Valley = suffering
Wholeness = contains both.
The goal isn't necessarily to permanently remain on the mountain.
It is to discover a dimension of awareness that can contain:
joy + sadness
energy + exhaustion
success + failure
pleasure + pain
without requiring one half of life to disappear before the whole can be accepted.
17. “EVERYTHING IS OKAY” DOES NOT MEAN EVERYTHING FEELS GOOD
This distinction is essential.
The article's:
“Everything is okay.”
doesn't mean:
“Everything is pleasant.”
It means something closer to:
“This moment is allowed to be what it is.”
So:
pain can exist inside acceptance.
fear can exist inside awareness.
burnout can exist inside wholeness.
grief can exist inside love.
18. THE HUMAN LEVEL STILL MATTERS
This is where the article saves itself from becoming purely metaphysical.
There are two levels:
Ultimate/contemplative level
Wholeness is already here.
Relative/human level
I need sleep.
Both can be true simultaneously.
You can say:
“I am fundamentally whole.”
and also:
“I need to go to bed at 9:30 tonight.”
That's not a contradiction.
19. PRESENCE IS ALWAYS NOW
The statement:
“I'm present when I'm not present.”
points toward a subtle observation.
Even when you remember the past, you're remembering it now.
Even when you imagine the future, you're imagining it now.
So experiential consciousness is always occurring in the present.
This doesn't mean the past and future don't exist objectively.
It means:
Your experience of past and future always appears in present awareness.
20. YOU ARE NOT JUST THE CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE
The article asks us to distinguish:
the story
from
the awareness in which the story appears.
Your biography is the story:
“I am this person, with this past, these problems, these ambitions, these failures.”
But contemplative inquiry asks:
What is present before the story about me begins?
That is the territory of:
pure awareness / witnessing / presence / being.
Different traditions give different names to it.
The BIG MAP
Burnout
↓
Raw sensations
↓
Mind labels them
↓
“This is terrible”
↓
Identity forms
↓
Rumination
↓
Second arrow
↓
More suffering
The alternative route:
Burnout
↓
Notice sensations
↓
Allow
↓
Don't immediately identify
↓
Observe the story
↓
Return to awareness
↓
Recognize impermanence
↓
Respond practically
↓
Rest / change / seek help where needed
↓
Greater psychological space
Connection to the Bhagavad Gita
This article has striking parallels with the Gita, especially your earlier question about 18.64 and Chapter 18.
Bates:
Allow what arises.
Gita:
Act without clinging to the fruits.
Bates:
Don't become trapped in the story of experience.
Gita:
Discriminate between the changing field and the deeper Self.
Bates:
Life flows; don't demand control over the flow.
Gita:
Perform your dharma while relinquishing attachment.
Bates:
You are the wave and the ocean.
Gita:
The individual is understood in relation to the deeper Self and the Divine.
But there is an important difference:
Bates' presentation is strongly nondual.
The Gita contains nondual strands, but also emphasizes dharma, devotion, action, relationship with Krishna, and surrender to the Divine.
So the Gita isn't simply saying:
“Everything is consciousness, therefore do nothing.”
Quite the opposite.
It says, in effect:
Realize deeply—and then live accordingly.
Connection to your earlier existential question
You previously explored:
“If life is temporary, why should it matter?”
This article gives a very different answer.
It doesn't try to prove that life has some permanent cosmic purpose.
Instead:
The value may be in the experiencing itself.
The wave doesn't need to become permanent to be a wave.
The sunset doesn't need to last forever to be beautiful.
The ice cream doesn't need to remain frozen forever to taste good.
And perhaps:
Life doesn't need to be permanent to be fully lived.
The deepest DDP
There are actually three layers of suffering in this essay:
Layer 1 — Pain
Something genuinely difficult happens.
Layer 2 — Identification
“This is happening to me.”
Layer 3 — Story
“This is what my life is.”
The contemplative move is to progressively loosen:
experience → identification → narrative
until there is simply:
experience happening in awareness.
And then the practical question becomes:
Given that this is happening, what is the wisest human response?
That last question prevents spirituality from becoming escapism.
🔥 ONE-LINE ESSENCE
“Don't immediately turn a passing experience into a permanent identity.”
And perhaps the strongest synthesis of the whole article:
Feel the valley without becoming the valley.
Or, in the author's own central metaphor:
“The wave need not fear the ocean because the wave is the ocean.”
