Recently, I realised some beliefs that I had about working as a cleaner. While on holiday I started to break the consciousness around cleaning.

I was sharing with some other people and the floor became very dirty, so I decided to clean it. As I was vacuuming and mopping, I could feel some resistance in me about cleaning the floor. I asked myself, why is this so?

I work partly as a cleaner and partly as a nanny. In the last 3 years I have experienced cleaning family homes, shops, seminar-centers etc. I started working as a cleaner because I didn’t have work in my usual field. I knew that there are always cleaning jobs available and the payment is good in comparison to other jobs.

I started working as a cleaner in a building that was used for holding seminars. I cleaned the whole seminar house for several days, for 4-5 hours at a time: I liked it and I was good at it because of my attention to detail. I take my time to do the cleaning and prefer to complete one room at a time so I don’t get confused with the jumping backwards and forwards.

Even though I was enjoying it and I knew that I was doing a good job, there was still a part of me that felt that working as a cleaner does not belong on the list of jobs that you would like to speak about. I was raised with the belief that you are what you do. So it was about identification with what I do and getting recognition and identification through a job title, or if I was earning a lot of money. I defined this as being ‘successful’.

My father was a dentist. I have studied and completed my Sociology degree at university. As I was not truly committed to work and didn’t want to take responsibility for my life, I worked in many different fields, often only for a short time… thinking that in the next job or field it will be different.

When I told my parents that I was working as a cleaner, they reacted strongly, which didn’t make it pleasant for me. I continued, but the more I started to accept that it is fine to work as a cleaner, the more my parents also accepted it… which was great!

I had an experience cleaning a sink in a bathroom and it was pure joy because the energy I was in expanded when I cleaned the sink. So I discovered that if I feel harmonious in my body and I stay with that quality then it is wonderful to move my body and clean a house. I have found that the activity of cleaning is absolutely neutral but we have tainted it with something negative, something which many of us don’t even like doing in our own homes. Many of us seem to have an unwritten attitude or rule that says No Way! to working as a cleaner.

I also had the belief that working in a physical job is not as much valued in our society compared to an office/business job.

I once thought that it would be too tiring and that my body wouldn’t be able to handle a lot of physical work. Which is all not true. I have found that my body loves to move when I clean and I end up having more energy than I can imagine, especially if I am working in a way that fully considers and is loving to my body. It is important to honor what the body is telling us.

What is truly exhausting is to live and express without love because this is not natural to our divine essence. So, to not feel the dis-ease of not being love and separated from others, I created distractions. I used emotions and food as my daily companions and for creating problems. Now I can see how long I have continued this way of living – not truly choosing to make it all about love, and only love. And that I have chosen this way of living for such a long time, accepting misery and disregard, keeping myself small as my way of being. But love is available now – I just received the picture – love waits on the doorsteps of my house, it is always there for me, I just need to open the door to my heart. We can’t lose love but we can fight it and deny it.

Through studying with Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon I have learned that what truly counts is not what I do but how I do it, and in which energy am I working. For example, if I am miserable and angry then this quality can be felt in the work I do.

There are only two energies to choose to be in:

The one that is of love and connection to your true self, the Divine/God/to all people –

or the one that is not of love and is in separation to God, to yourself and others.

If I choose to be love, I feel joyful and loving. I then clean with this love and joy for the house and the families I work in and for.

Now I get to feel and know how important it is to not only take care of myself when I am working as a cleaner in other people’s homes, but also to lovingly take care of myself equally in my own surroundings, for example, keeping my own house clean and tidy. As soon as I do not look after my clothes or tidy the kitchen after me, then that reflects to me that I am not in harmony and am not consciously present with myself.

I have really connected to this recently – that “everything matters“: we can not ignore anymore things which do not feel right for us. And our marker needs to be our body – not our mind.

By Janina Koch,Cologne/Germany (EASL)