Recently I approached a traffic light where a man stood in shabby clothes with a three-legged dog by his side. As I waited for light to change I looked at this scene with compassion and felt an urge to contribute something. The sign he was carrying indicated that he was homeless. The people in my car commented that he was a strong young man, there were plenty of employment opportunities, and why should anyone give to people who are capable of working. They indicated a kind of mild contempt for this man soliciting funds whom they felt "should" be working. My thoughts were on him and fact that he cared for and fed this crippled dog. I rolled down window and gave him several dollars for which he expressed enormous gratitude.

As companions in my car semi-scolded me for being a sucker and for enabling him to continue to be a beggar I thought of some words of Mother Teresa. "You see, in final analysis, it is all between you and God, it was never between you and them anyway." Truly this was not between me and my friends in car, nor was it between that homeless man and me. It was between God and me. Something inside of me urged me to extend love and a little cash to man and his dog. That "something" was a fleeting moment of consulting my soul.

To me, spiritual and physical are not two separate dimensions of reality. I think of spiritual practice as a way of making my life work at a higher level and receiving guidance for handling my problems. The ways in which I do this involve a few simple, basic practices:

Surrender is most crucial and perhaps most difficult for me. In surrendering, my thoughts are something like this: I simply do not know how to resolve this situation and I am turning it over to same force that I turn my physical body over to every night when I go to sleep. I trust in this unseen part of me to keep my heart beating, my blood circulating, and so on.

One of most important ingredients in your personal development is taking real responsibility for your actions. This requires that you consciously become cause of results that you want. Refuse to behave like a victim... or to wait for someone to save you from life's problems. Keys to Self-responsibility

To reach your full potential, you need to take responsibility for your actions in meaningful ways...

Consciousness. You have a choice -- you can pay attention and be fully present when you are making critical decisions, such as working on a project, reading your performance review or deciding whether to have another drink. Or you can be physically present but mentally absent during these activities. Either way, you are responsible for level of consciousness you bring to any occasion -- and you are responsible for results.

Decisions and actions. It is tempting to "disconnect" from our choices -- to insist that someone or something is driving us to behave way we do. Other people don't make you talk or act in certain ways. You are responsible for how you speak and listen... whether you act rationally or not... whether you treat others fairly or unfairly... whether you keep your promises or break them. Once you recognize that you are source of your own decisions and actions, you are far more likely to proceed wisely -- and to act in ways that will not cause embarrassment or regret later.

Fulfillment of desires. A major cause of unhappiness or frustration is imagining that someone will come along to "rescue" you -- to solve your problems and fulfill your wishes. A self-responsible person recognizes that no one is coming to make life right or to "fix" things. You acknowledge that nothing will get better unless you do something to make it happen.

Beliefs and values. Many people are happy to reflect passively what others believe and value. Or they assume that their ideas arise naturally out of their feelings -- by instinct. Self-responsible people work to become aware of their beliefs and values... to critically scrutinize them... to seek out people who see things differently... and then to make up their own minds.