{"id":3574,"date":"2014-09-04T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/?p=3574"},"modified":"2014-09-02T02:02:54","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T06:02:54","slug":"spiritual-work-and-being-a-good-householder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/09\/spiritual-work-and-being-a-good-householder.html","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Work and Being a Good Householder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong> I have struggled with my career and work for all of my life. My wife and I live frugally, not wastefully, and do our best to be responsible householders. You have said that we must first be good householders before we can really do the spiritual work we need to.\u00a0It seems that the “householder” part of my life has always been very up and down. Does not ever being satisfied with any job mean I need to be more grounded somehow before I can move forward with my spiritual life?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong> A good householder is not someone with lots of goods; he is a man who takes care of himself and his family by working in and through whatever he must in order to achieve the basic needs; he has pride in what he does, but is not proud. A good householder is someone who understands that his first order of business is the good of his interior house, so that he can’t be deceived by a world that would sell him the “house” of someone else, at the cost of losing his own. Lastly, a good householder understands that until he is doing the very best he can to have his outer house in order, he can’t possibly succeed with his inner house. But this doesn’t mean he’s trying to “win” at what must be done, only that he doesn’t accept losing as his fate, and so persists until some kind of foundation is achieved upon which he can build accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: I have struggled with my career and work for all of my life. My wife and I live frugally, not wastefully, and do our best to be responsible householders. You have said that we must first be good householders before we can really do the spiritual work we need to.\u00a0It seems that the “householder”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,26],"tags":[136,2022,2024,1532,2023,989,2025,72,1981],"class_list":["post-3574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enlightenment-self-realization","category-family-raising-children","tag-career","tag-daily-duties","tag-householder","tag-inner-life","tag-job","tag-responsibilities","tag-spiritual-foundation","tag-spiritual-work","tag-taking-care-of-family"],"yoast_head":"\nSpiritual Work and Being a Good Householder - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2014\/09\/spiritual-work-and-being-a-good-householder.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual Work and Being a Good Householder - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question: I have struggled with my career and work for all of my life. My wife and I live frugally, not wastefully, and do our best to be responsible householders. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. 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