The Death of Fish
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”
–Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist and Philosopher, 1817-1862)
The BBC has just run a gloomy report based on an article published this week in the journal Science.
For years now, fisherman have been reporting that many of the larger
game fish have been getting smaller and younger, and the same has been
reported of smaller fish in the major fishing grounds.
Now this research, which seems quite impeccable, predicts that there will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by 2048 if current trends continue. Stocks of fish have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.
When the first reports came out, they quickly became fodder for the late night comedians: “You think they use a lot of batter now? Just imagine how much they’re going to have to put around a minnow, come 2050.”
But that quickly gave rise to an understanding of he gravity of the situation: the decline in numbers of fish is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity. And that is the point. I’ve heard people say, “I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t care,” or “I don’t like fish anyway.” The ocean, like every other known ecosystem, is like a vast interlocked organism.
Everything that lives in the ocean is important. The diversity of ocean life is the key to its survival. The areas of the ocean with the most different kinds of life are the healthiest. If we knock out entire species the whole will cease to function, and then we have dead oceans. Ocean fish filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines, and they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.
In addition, a large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences.
These findings are not a computer model, or some prediction of future trends. They are based on actual observations of what is happening right now.
Why are we talking about this issue in a blog dedicated to personal growth, integration and wellness? Because seeing the larger You – the You that is interconnected with the rest of the Universe, the You that transcends your physical body, your brain and your emotions – is crucial to all of those three goals.
Yes, you can certainly feel a lot more healthy by eating better. Breathing exercises are valuable too. Do the two together and you get the advantage of synergy: they leverage each other. But you will really make progress when you begin to feel, really feel in a deep down visceral way, that You are something much larger and more grand. And that You also have responsibilities for the welfare of the planet. Because You are part of it, and it is a part of You.
Once You – the whole Big You – really “gets that,” you will feel the need to leave an enduring legacy, and You become an unstoppable force for good. Then you progress rapidly. Not because you are working on yourself, but because you are now acting from your Higher Self.
“I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself.”
–Carl G. Jung (Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, 1875-1961)
“In the end we all must turn to the inner Source of all our best human sources, to the Guru of all the gurus, to the Overself. Then why not now?”
–Paul Brunton (English Spiritual Teacher and Author, 1898-1981)
Karma
The Sanskrit word karma has been part of our vocabulary since the late 1960s. Over thirty years ago I was speaking to one of George Harrison’s lawyers in London, who had followed in the footsteps of the Beatles and flirted with Transcendental Meditation. He told me that karma just meant “fate,” which was not at all what I’d been taught.
I’ve just seen a number of articles that have used the term very loosely. What is even more perplexing is that often the same writer will talk about karma as a causal law, and then immediately start talking about quantum mechanics, in which many actions are not causal at all. Some even start dabbling in synchronicity, forgetting, perhaps, that the subtitle of the original paper by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli was “An Acausal Connecting Principle.”
It’s important to get it right: if we misunderstand a law or principle of life, it’s difficult to stay on track. And we have to realize that although there are plenty of opinions about karma, synchronicity, quantum mechanics and the rest, there are also some real objective facts to guide us.
Let me give you an example of one of these articles: “Karma deals with the law of cause and effect. Everything that happens to us (effect) has had a previous cause. The evolution of karmic law means that we can be master of our own destiny. Your karmic lessons in life reflect the qualities that you either lack, or are weak in, and are those hindering your success…” This is so contradictory. There is no place for chance, yet you can master your destiny, despite the fact that your behavior must have a previous cause. This isn’t just circular reasoning; it’s more like pretzel logic!
So is karma complicated? Is there a simple way to understand it and work with it?
Karma means “action,” and it refers to the intentional acts of conscious beings. These acts may be physical, or they may be thoughts or feelings. Intentions results in acts that cause effects in the mind, the body, the subtle systems, our relationships and our spirituality. This way of looking at karma links inextricably with the evidence being generated by the Global Consciousness Project.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his book The Universe in a Single Atom makes a clear distinction between the operation of the natural law of causality, in which some action will have a certain set of effects, and the law of karma, in which an intentional act will reap certain results. He uses a good example: if a campfire gets out of control in a forest, the resulting fire, smoke and charcoal are simple, natural and expected results. By contrast if you light a fire and forget to put it out, which then causes the chain of events: that’s karmic causation.
I this view, the large-scale universe evolves according to causal laws. When it has evolved to the stage of supporting sentient life, now the fate of the universe becomes entangled with the karma of the sentient beings that now inhabit it. But there’s something more to it.
Matter in its most subtle form is Qi or Prana, a vital field energy that is inseparable from consciousness. The Qi or Prana provides dynamic movement and cohesion, while consciousness provides awareness, cognition and self-reflection. This indivisible pair produces our bodies and the universe as a whole. Every particle in the universe possesses conscious awareness, but it is not until sentience arises that the law of karma comes into play.
In Kriya Yoga there has been the development of many complex ideas about karma, subdividing it into multiple types, and with advice on how to attract good karma and dispel the bad. For students who would like to go into these distinctions in more detail, there a very nice short book entitled The Laws of Karma.
Because karma implies that the universe is lawful and moral, it has often been misinterpreted as fatalism. But that s not correct: every decision is a product of free will. To be sure, it is a free will that is tempered by the causal forces of our genetic makeup and environment. One of the major goals of self-development is to free yourself from the restrictions imposed upon you by your genes and your environment, so that you can make decisions that will generate the greatest good for the largest number of people.
What we must not do is to use karma as an excuse. If you are playing a game of cards, you play the hand that you are given. There’s no point in complaining about your bad luck: your learn how to make the best play wit the cards that you have in your hand.
“Knowing that his past actions may try to overwhelm him, the devotee must be prepared to combat them. God will give him the strength: His Name will be an impenetrable armor. It will save him from all the consequences.”
–Swami Brahmananda (Indian Religious Figure, 1854-1922)
“It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.”
–Jean Rostand (French Biologist and Historian, 1894-1977)
Beating Burnout
I have been getting a number of requests to re-post some of my materials about burnout.
This is a summary of some of the information that we cover in our corporate wellness seminars. For people who are interested, we have also created a Powerpoint slide set, together with reference materials which are available for purchase from our website.
So let us begin at the beginning and ask:
What is Burnout?
This may seem such an obvious question, since the term “burnout” has become part of everyday language, but it is still the topic of a great deal of research.
The best definition of burnout is “a prolonged response to chronic physical, emotional and interpersonal stressors at work.” It is defined by three dimensions:
- Exhaustion
- Cynicism
- Inefficacy
It is more than just an individual experience of stress: it has to be seen in the larger organizational context of people’s relationship with their work.
It is often the case that individuals miss all the signs in themselves.
So what are the main symptoms of burnout?
- Worrying, particularly at night
- Trouble sleeping
- Feeling unappreciated or “used” at work
- Feeling less effective or competent than you used to
- Easily angry or irritated
- Dread of going to work
- A feeling of being overwhelmed
- Recurrent stress-related physical symptoms like headaches, or back pain
- Watching the clock and counting down toward the end of the work day
- Rigidly applying riles without considering more creative solutions
- Automatically expressing negative attitudes
- Finding excuses to be absent from work
- Alcohol or substance abuse
We need to ask questions about conditions at work. For instance whether individuals are asked to work extra long shifts, go without breaks and lack clear guidelines.
Who is at greatest risk?
Helping professionals and people who have great responsibility for others, such as airline pilots and air traffic controllers.
Although there are some psychological predictors for who are more likely to suffer from burnout, with enough stressors just about anyone can become a victim of it. Some people have claimed that burnout is a physical illness resulting from exhaustion of the adrenal glands, but the research doesn’t show that. Burnout is primarily a problem of the system in which you work, interacting with your body and your mind. So now let’s look at how to transform yourself from victim to victor.
The major risk factors are:
- Feeling powerless
- Being caught in conflict
- Having inadequate information
- Lack of central visions
- Incoordination of the team
- Overload
- Boredom
- Alienation
- Ambiguity
- Conflict of values
What are the Solutions?
Dealing with burnout needs the help of all workers and the organization as a whole. Sometimes it also needs the help of an outsider. I was once working in a very unhappy place, in the days long before I realized that I had the power to change things myself. A psychologist friend working in the then new field of systems theory, told me that the problem was not with individuals, but that the whole system was “sick” and disorganized and what was needed was a system overhaul.
The opposite of job burnout is job engagement. If you feel that you are engaged in doing something valuable, for which you are appreciated, you are far more likely to have a satisfying life and enjoy doing your job well. There is good evidence that participation, engagement and autonomy are powerful predictors of health outcomes.
First, at the personal level:
The keys to preventing burnout are represented by the acronym REAP:
Resilience
Engagement
Autonomy
Participation
- Evaluate your personal goals and priorities: what do you really want to get out of life, and even more importantly, what do you want to put in to life
- Ensure that you have established your own core values, your purpose and your meaning. (My book and CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose spends a lot of time on helping you do exactly that.)
- Attend to your own health, through exercise, nutrition and sleep. (I have worked with countless individuals with burnout, whose problems largely evaporated once they were diverted from the coffee, soda and snack machines. Remember the close relationships between food and mood.)
- Make sure that you have some outside interests. Not just things that further drain your energy, but something that you enjoy.
- Learn some specific stress reduction techniques. (I also have some suggestions for doing so in my book.)
- Are you a micromanager who has to do everything yourself? If so, then it is a really good idea to learn to delegate. And don’t take on responsibilities that are not yours. (It took me years to learn that one: I was such a slave to perfectionism, that I always thought that I had to everything myself. Bad mistake)
- If your find yourself expressing negativity, work on substituting a positive word for every negative one.
- Learn to forgive yourself if things are not going well, and use reversals as the fuel to power you to achievement: it’s what I call “silver-lining:” How to find the positive in any negative situation.
- Try to form a support group or see if you can arrange for an outsider to some in and help you.
- Are there some specific skills that you need to build and develop?
- Can you tailor or change your job?
- Develop detachment
Second, at the organizational level:
- Evaluate overall work performance: if it declining, it may be an early sign that staff members are being afflicted by burnout.
- Consider changes in managerial practices, to move away from the dominator to a partnership model.
- Research has indicated that there are six key areas in which mismatches may lead to burnout: workload; personal control; appropriateness of rewards; sense of connection; sense of fairness and a conflict of values. So it is a good idea to break down any analyses and interventions along these lines.
- All the evidence suggests that a combination of managerial change and education are the best way to head off and to deal with burnout.
- There is also some research showing that a values-based spiritual program to prevent and deal with burnout. The recommendations include a short time for silence, visualization, reflection, active listening, appreciation creativity and playfulness.
What is very clear is that burnout is not just a personal problem; it is something that can affect an entire organization, and has to be tackled as an organization. If it is not, then in these difficult times in health care, we are going to have ever more tired and disillusioned people trying to care for sicker and sicker patients, and just not having the resources to do so.
Transcending Overload and Burnout
There is an important notion that is rarely even talked about. Why does stress and burnout exist? Is it simply bad overloaded wiring in the brain and bad overloaded wiring in our relationships and in our places of work? Well, yes, that is of course correct. But there is also something else: burnout occurs because multiple sets of systems are failing. Nature abhors a vacuum, so from the ashes of these failed systems a new and improved you can emerge. Remember the ancient story of the Phoenix that emerges from the flames. And you might know the statement by Richard Bach: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
We need to discard broken systems so that our true self can emerge.
I would like you to think about burnout as a state of consciousness that you are ready to outgrow. You can practice the psychological band-aids, or you can accept the invitation to grow.
There will inevitably be some transition pains, but that is to be expected as the new you is being born. This is also a good time to do an exercise that I recommend in Healing, Meaning and Purpose, and it is to establish where each part of you – Physical, Psychological, Social, Subtle and Spiritual – lies in terms of the Memes of Spiral Dynamics. If you do this exercise every few months, and at times of transition, it can provide powerful proof that the burnout is actually presenting you with a unique opportunity to grow.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Mood Disorders, the Serotonin Transporter and Integrated Medicine
Whenever we run into two common conditions, it’s easy to imagine links where none really exists. Three years ago some colleagues from Oxford reported on a person with bipolar disorder and irritable bowel syndrome, and commented that the association was uncommon.
However there may after all be a genuine link between mood disorders and irritable bowel syndrome, that is a disturbance in the “third arm” of the autonomic nervous system. The first arm is the sympathetic nervous system, the second the parasympathetic and the third is the enteric or gut nervous system that is closely linked with key regions of the brain.
Not long ago there was an interesting report of a woman who had multiple problems including environmental allergies, atypical bipolar disorder, irritable bowel syndrome and Raynaud’s phenomenon. Such odd constellations of problems are quite familiar to anyone working in the major referral centers around the world, and some can be exceedingly hard to treat. Tough cases like this often stimulate further research. I once tried and failed to treat a woman with a chronic illness. When she came back a year later to see if I had any new ideas, I told her that I now had a shelf of books and over a thousand reprint of papers about her condition: I don’t like failing someone. And I’m not unique in that.
A new study from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, has found that chronic widespread pain, which, as I explained recently, is the cardinal symptom of fibromyalgia, is prevalent and co-occurs with other symptom-based conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, joint pain, headache, irritable bowel syndrome, and psychiatric disorders.
There is more and more evidence of a link between fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and depression. It is not just that people are sick and get depressed: as we shall see in a moment, the link is more subtle than that. Another illness seemingly linked to these three is interstitial cystitis.
Now some colleagues at the National Institutes of Health have been looking at a serotonin transporter (SERT) that regulates the entire serotoninergic system and its receptors. This transporter is found throughout the animal kingdom, telling us that it must be important.
In humans the gene is located on chromosome 17, and disturbances in it have been found in people with autism, ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome and bipolar disorder. Experiments using genetic engineering suggest that SERT may be a candidate gene for several human disorders, from obesity to irritable bowel syndrome. People who have disturbances in SERT tend not to respond so well to the serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) antidepressant medicines.
SERT is not the whole story. Some geneticists from Los Angeles have found evidence linking irritable bowel syndrome, depression, migraine and inheritance of mitochondrial DNA.
Many approaches have been tried to help people with these groups of problems. I always find it remarkable that psychological treatments can be so effective in conditions with a genetic component, for this once again proves that biology is not destiny.
The best approaches to conditions like irritable bowel syndrome and coexisting mood disorders is to use medications and psychological approaches. Many of us have also found that the addition of nutritional, environmental and subtle energetic approaches have been of great help, together with some work to uncover the meaning and transpersonal value of a chronic illness. That last piece is not the first priority, which is to help the person gain control of his or her life. But if we don’t do something to work with the meaning and purpose of an illness, it will usually come back in some form or other. This comprehensive approach differentiates Integrated Medicine from many other types of therapy.
