Ego Feels Good Barbequia Feels Love
Barbequia as we mentioned is all about you. It’s about doing what you love and enjoy. It’s about living your dreams now and working to perfect them over time. (In Barbequia we reserve the right to alter, cancel, modify or otherwise adjust our goals and dreams at any time – if not all the time.) It is about creating a place that is your personal sanctuary that goes with you wherever you go, and that lets you live in your own little world while still interacting with the crazy one. It’s about being at peace with yourself, others and the universe.
You will notice that in the descriptions of Barbequia there are no references to “feeling good” and, in fact, the few made are to illustrate what we don’t want. Instead we refer to being at peace. If you think back to any moment that really “felt good” you will notice that for it to do so, there had to be some ego involved. Give it a shot – think about any moment, memory, event, that really made you feel good. Picture it in your mind, relive it, and recreate that feel good moment. Now this is where I usually get an objection because my contention is that no matter how righteous or noble your moment, if it made you feel good, it was ego-based and therefore neutral. By neutral I mean that whatever you did, created, or thought is neutralized or weakened by our Ego’s drain on its energy. Okay, so here we delve into some hocus-pocus. For those of light mind, follow along and you’ll get it; for those who need to understand the science – look at it as a metaphor.
Every thought, action, event, and moment in time we participate in has a certain amount of energy. It can be looked at as the potential to realize, karma points, or a degree of “deserve-ance of blessings”. However you look at it, there is energy nonetheless. The problem with ego is that it is such an energy hog. I am certain we have all spent time with someone with a huge ego. Do you know one of those people that can’t seem to get enough of themselves, and the topic of every conversation is them? It can be exhausting. But no matter how much you feed that ego or they feed it themselves, they can never get enough. Have you ever known an egocentric to all of the sudden stop and say, “Okay, I have had enough of myself, from now on it’s about everyone else”? That’s because ego is a black hole – it sucks up anything around it and never seems to get enough.
So what’s the difference between “feeling good” and “being at peace” and why should I strive to be at peace vs. feel good?
Feeling good is when you just handed the homeless mother a $20 bill and she broke into tears as she thanked you and blessed you, and you walked away with that damn Id-dance-a-jig-if-I-could-dance-a-jig-and-not-look-like-an-ass feeling in your chest. While the deed is noble and certainly a blessing to the homeless lady, the effect is telling of the spirit it was done in. While ego feels good, being at peace or Barbequia feels love – there is little emotion involved in the outcome other than love. This allows the energy of what we do to be used in its entirety for the end or reality we are creating or participating in without draining any off to the ego.
To illustrate this concept a bit more, let´s look at some historical examples at the risk of cliché. When I imagine what being at peace looks like I imagine someone like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, a Zen Master or Jesus of Nazareth. I imagine them based on my study of their lives, conducting themselves quietly, and living the principle of don’t let the right hand know what the left does. Somehow I don’t picture Jesus jumping up and kicking his heels while saying, “yes!!!” after resurrecting Lazarus. I’m certain Lao Tzu didn’t say, “Who’s your daddy” as he penned the last chapter of the Tao Te Ching, and Gandhi wasn’t chanting, “go Gandhi – it’s your birthday” as his philosophy of non-violence effectively changed a nation and brought down the grip of a tyrant. And yet I am certain that in each case, it felt just right. They operated out of love and felt love in its purest form as they experienced life and shared their enlightenment with others.