Late last February I received a phone call from my cousin in the Kootenay area of British Columbia asking me if I wanted a summer job in a Lodge. She knew I was thinking about moving to the area once I finished with my group in Peru. Without even thinking about it I replied, “Yes.” I did not ask what the job was or what the pay would be or any of the other details that one usually asks when agreeing to a job. It just felt right and I responded to it.
It was not until a month of so later that I found out that it was a housekeeping job at a small Lodge in the area and that I would be working with a friend of hers. Initially when I would tell my family and friends that I had a job in the Kootenay’s for the summer I would just say it was in a Lodge. My ego mind was a little embarrassed to tell them that I would be doing housekeeping, as if it was something beneath me. My ego mind still held to the story that I was a professional with a couple of university degrees and many years of experience as an educator. When I caught myself relating from this ego mind I would stop, look at it and then let it go with the saying “it is not what I do but how I be.” Soon I was telling everyone who asked, that I had a job housekeeping in a Lodge and I did it from the heart.
By the time I finally arrived in the Kootenay’s and started working I had released that ego story of who I was and was ready to take it on one day at a time and just enjoy. To begin with it was not easy and my body did a fair bit of complaining as muscles that had not been worked for years began to get a work out. I now have a new appreciation for the thousands of housekeepers around the world who do this for a living.
One day, as I made my way from room to room I had the realization that not so long ago I would have complained and moaned and then found a way to get out of my commitment, but my years of training in the Andes with my shaman friend taught me to focus the mind on what I was doing, do it well, and keep on going. This I did and each day I went into the Lodge with a smile on my face and song in my heart. Right from the beginning as I closed each door after cleaning the room I would say a blessing for whoever stayed in the room. Before long the aches and pains left and I felt a sense of accomplishment. I could spread light and shine love on anything I was doing. I came to realise that I had been given a wonderful opportunity to put into practise what I had been telling others for a long time, “It is not what you do, it is how you BE” that counts.
As we walk through our Earthly Experience, we so often get caught up in our story or hi-story of whom we are that we do not allow ourselves to experience the joy of just BEING in the moment and enjoying what ever we are doing. We get tangled in our ego’s idea of who we are and what that means from an ego perspective. For example, I am a professional with this or that qualification and therefore, I should have a job within this salary and benefits and I should not have to do this or that. OR the opposite, we view our selves from a limited ego story, I couldn’t do that because I don’t have any skills or no one would hire me for that job. We tend to put so much time and energy into our story that forget what is really important and that is the living in the moment with joy and has very little to do with what we do. We tend to place so many limits on ourselves by holding on to our ego story that we miss opportunities that might give us so much pleasure, satisfaction and joy.
I give thanks to the Creator for sending me this experience to fully know the power behind the saying “IT IS NOT WHAT YOU DO BUT HOW YOU BE.”
Love and blessings,
Wawa Quilla
