Ho’oponopono: How To Clean

Whenever cleaning comes up as a topic in ho’oponopono it seems to split into two flavours. In one of these cleaning is simple and easy. It relies upon following a cleaning prescription (such as saying the ho’oponopono prayer). On the other extreme, ho’oponopono is discussed as if it were a dark art in which solely those imbued with the ‘secret’ knowledge’ or generations of Hawaiian culture can be practitioners of the ‘real’ ho’oponopono. This is a huge logical typing error.*

There is nothing mysterious about cleaning. It’s simply that different situations can benefit from different methods. In traditional Hawaiian culture much is made of going back through all of the layers of history which are contained within your psyche in order to correct past errors. We do this because we know that it’s correct to emphasise our responsibilities over our rights. After all, we are representatives of both our ancestors as well as future beings. The choices we make today will affect both.

Going back through layers enables skilled practitioners to perform soul retrieval, which may release earthbound spirits, allowing them to pass over so that they may be reincarnated at some point.

The rest of us are concerned with releasing our ties to the past so that our lives get simplified and we can live as happier individuals.

This is where cleaning methods come into play. Whilst it’s true that simply repeating the ho’oponopono mantra, or making blue solarised water, or whatever other technique we may use will have benefits, these will be limited due to our lack of appreciation and understanding of what we’re attempting to do.

Take the physical act of cleaning, for example. It may be understood as a pleasure, or as a chore. Neither are really correct.

My mother had a routine. Every morning she would put on some old clothes and do some physical cleaning. She saw this as her job as a homemaker and so on Mondays she would clean her bedrooms, on Tuesdays the hall and lavatories. Wednesdays were for the bathroom and windows. Thursday was market day (so no cleaning was done). On Friday she cleaned the kitchen and dining room, and Saturday the sitting room. Sundays she made a special lunch and went over any area that there hadn’t been time for during the week.

Although she saw all of this cleaning as her role in life, she never seemed to enjoy it (although, paradoxically she encouraged others to adopt her practices even though they made her feel so unhappy).

I never clean like this. After I heard Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len tell of how every building, and chair is a being I realised that cleaning was immediately easier when I regarded home as a being. Just as I would automatically keep any toddler child clean, and well maintained, so I learned to do the same for my home.

This realisation changed everything. The fact is that cleaning isn’t simply a task to be discarded onto a professional firm at the first opportunity but, rather, a sacred rite performed as an act of love for the Divine.

It’s the same for all methods of cleaning, even the purely ‘mental’ ones. All need to be understood as acts of devotion. No rewards should be expected if the best surprises are to be experienced.

So in a way there ARE two flavours of cleaning. According to one flavour the benefit is in performing a ritualised form no matter your mental attitude. In the second flavour, cleaning is first and foremost an act of loving (which is of itself a place where nothing and no one else has done anything to merit forgiveness, where we are overcome with awe, rather than simple gratitude, and we can begin to experience life as Divinity experiences it herself).

*Logical typing errors are (according to anthropologist Gregory Bateson) where an object or behaviour is ascribed to a different class to that in which it naturally belongs.