A shepherd's flock is essentially his passive sustenance. A lifestyle where you're physically active every day and don't have to answer to anyone all the time is my idea of freedom. We've all succumbed to tech and toys and while I can simulate reality on my phone I don't think I'm living a better life than people 200 years ago. I think there is a boredom that sometimes arises if we cannot exert our intellect to create something, but life costs too much to work at a leisure pace.
http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ Look liberating that looks.
One minor additional thought about this: "the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it [...]"
For a long time my model was similar, that this sort of change is something I could lose and find. I was excited to find it, sad to lose it. When I had it, I expected to keep on having it, and was surprised when it was gone. But it doesn't behave like an object.
A more useful model to me is one of homeostasis and calibration. When I end up in a different equilibrium than the one I prefer, I think of myself as also having some sensor (or perhaps sensor weighting) out of calibration.
For example, relating to stress and burnout, I was poor at noticing the subtle bodily sensations that occur early on in that cycle. When my body offered me alarms, I had a tendency to hit snooze, treating the alerts as unimportant. And I was over-sensitive to other people's desires and my (generally good) desire to do things "right", by which I mean in accordance with readings from other sensors.
Now I don't think I'll ever have peace, as if it were an object. But I do think I can create peace, that I can sustain peace. For me, though, that requires careful attention to keeping those sensors well-calibrated and respecting not just the big red warning lights, but the small yellow ones.
I also wonder, based on the training, whether those sensations are signs of burnout or whether the reactions to those sensations are actually what's causing the problem. Perhaps by noticing those sensations and teaching the body to react with equanimity I'd find the same effect that happens with other sensations of aversion. I've experienced the power of that equanimous reaction with something as simple as physical pain, which became a shadow of itself. I'm curious whether burnout is similarly inflated in severity by the mind's reaction to it.
Oh, that the secret does lie within us, and that we must cross a frozen field to arrive at it. Who knows
I'm going to take one small phrase you wrote entirely out of context because I think there's a point to make.
I'm suffering from burnout at the moment and trying to figure out a way past it. I recently attended a 10-day silent meditation training and one of the requirements was to surrender all my devices (phone, computer, etc) and any other forms of distraction (books, pen and paper, playing cards). Basically, I was alone with only my mind for 10 days, unable to speak or communicate with others for the entire period. It was hell for the first couple days, but by the third day I was really starting to enjoy it.
As I've re-integrated my devices again, the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it and be much more conscious about reintegrating my devices afterwards. I'm starting to believe that, at least for me, burnout is an overstimulation, and things that I didn't even realize were forms of stimulation were contributing. But the biggest forms of stimulation, Internet, computers, phones and television are all things that I now realize I have to use incredibly judiciously.
I think we'll look back at this time, when we introduced all these devices into our society without any concept of the damage they cause, very similarly to the times when we used lead paint on our walls or asbestos in our ceilings. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we study the effect it has on our health, we'll be horrified.
P.S. On the doing nothing front, having spent 10 days being forced to do nothing but think in between the meditation sessions, it's really underrated and I wonder whether you've given it a fair shot. You really have to go days of doing literally nothing but thinking before it starts to give you any benefit. But once you do, you can just feel the stress melting away. The hard part is making it through the initial stage and then maintaining that benefit once you start to reintegrate with the rest of society.