Bruce Leroy Spiritual Q/A

Dictionary.com defines happy: “1. delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: to be happy to see a person. 2. characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy: a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.” Even though this definition doesn’t say it, happy is the opposite of sad. You can tell that two opposites relate to each other when you can you use one to describe the other, for instance; happy is not being sad and sad is not being happy. Within the definition of a thing you breed it’s opposite. This should be visualized as a yin yang symbol as opposed to a line with two ends. A line with two ends implies a gradient value between the two points on its extremes and can make the mind believe that points in the middle, and end have different values when in reality all of the points are flavors of the same value. The moment that you ask me/yourself if I/you are happy, we need to figure out where we stand in between happy and sad (not happy). Can you explain happiness...

I had to smile when I read this question because I’m pretty sure everyone, especially spiritual people, have pondered it at least once in their lives! Right off the bat I commend you on having the right approach; you used the word “challenges” which doesn’t have a negative implication. Usually I would say that, that is the first step, understanding that a difficulty is just a challenge. In fact, I have a feeling you thought of the answer yourself (if you didn’t already have one in mind) a few moments after hitting ‘send.’ I would counter with the question, “If you’re on the right path, why would you stop facing challenges?” The thing is this; a challenge is only a challenge if it forces us to grow in order to meet it. If it doesn’t force growth, then it is an ‘exercise.’ The nature of the universe is change, and trying to seek stasis is not in accordance with nature. We must of course try to hold on to what we believe is important, but we also must know when to release them. Life just ...

“I have a friend who I feel often fishes for compliments and pats on the back. I know she lacks confidence, though I feel that if I pay her these compliments it would be insincere. My usual reaction is to withdraw. How can I better handle this?”-Anonymous. One of the challenges about being a spiritual person is that you bear a greater responsibility then someone who is not spiritually aware, regardless of your religious orientation. Because you know your friend lacks confidence, it means that you’re sensitive and aware, your asking for advice means you’re spiritual and caring. You’ll notice that I rephrased your question above to make it more general because I do believe that it is part of a general challenge that we all face often. I can’t judge your ability to assess your friend’s lack of confidence and how it manifests, but I will address your question as though your assessment is valid. That means that you have a friend that needs to change, and you’re aware of it. You want to hand...

I think my response to this question may seem harsh and unromantic, maybe even negative but I only believe in ‘trust’, when it comes to humans, as a concept. Dictionary.com defines trust: “confident expectation of something; hope.” I’m always saying, and don’t mind repeating here, that hope is just another side of fear. When you hope for something you are actually fearing its opposite. For example, if you hope your lover is faithful, you are afraid that they are not. In the above definition of ‘trust’ it even gives us the word ‘expectation’ which again is a ‘hope’. There is no reason to hope, trust, or expect anything in life. You have to take the actions to make a reality for yourself, based on your ideals. You can only take ownership for your own actions so it just doesn’t make sense to expend energy on things outside of your control. You can be faithful, and believe me you stand a better chance of having a faithful mate, but ultimately there is no guarantee. We don’t always know th...

This is a difficult question in detail but not in concept. The first way this should be approached is asking your self, “What should individuals in my life do if I don’t follow through on my word?” I’m not saying that you don’t follow your word because, as someone that does follow their word, I know that it is possible. I also know that it is unfortunately, not that common. So then, the next question to self is, “What should God/the Universe do to me when I don’t keep my word?” The primary thing to do is to make sure that all three of these questions have only one answer. I said that I keep my word but I haven’t been without fault, especially when it comes to keeping my word with my self. I can’t tell you how to deal with someone else in reaction to them doing ‘wrong’ because I myself ask for forgiveness. In order to get forgiveness you must be willing to give it. What you should do is forgive them. Even if you consider your self next to perfect, you had to get to that point through ev...

The main way that I stay positive is by taking ownership over my happiness. As a child I always believed that happiness is a choice, and after a lifetime of trials, I still do. One could be happy while they’re being picked apart by vultures, but their happiness wouldn’t necessarily be of value, especially if it prevented them from finding a way to escape from their situation. In other words, sometimes happiness is not what is needed for the best end result because it is the opposite of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is the inspiration behind positive change (but it’s better to change first.) I believe that we need to bridge the duality, and we need to be dissatisfied while being satisfied, satisfied while being dissatisfied. That way we won’t need the feeling of dissatisfaction – we will be proactive in creating positivity. Now remember that this only applies to the things that are within our realm of changing. We shouldn’t measure our mood by external factors outside of our control...

I’ll begin, in order, with how I feel about dreams. Like many of my responses, I like to use the word ‘tool’. The interesting thing about dreams is that they are a two-way tool, in that we can use their interpretations to help us, and they are a tool for different levels of consciousness to communicate to ourselves. By that definition, it’s easy to understand why dreams are difficult to classify. Science has already proven that we dream regardless of whether or not we remember what the dream was about. Is this because we aren’t supposed to remember them, or is it because we are supposed to develop a greater awareness of them and we are just (generally) born under skilled? Well, that’s a question that we have to ask ourselves as individuals. Dreams communicate to us through symbols. As a society, we tend to be very naive when it comes to the interpretation of symbols, which makes me feel that we are hundreds, if not thousands of years away from truly utilizing the tool of dreaming. The ...

After some meditation I do recall seeing these numbers a few years back for a few months. During that time, in addition to 11 11, I noticed a few other number combinations as well like 11:33, which is my birth time. This question is very tricky though because it deals with symbolism. I did some research and was surprised at the amount of people that see these combinations and feel that there is a spiritual significance behind them. When it comes to symbolism, there are symbols that mean something to humankind, symbols that mean something to a particular culture, and there are symbols that mean something to an individual. Let’s talk about individual symbolism first. Individual symbolism concerns symbols that mean something to an individual. For me, seeing 11:33 on the clock all the time was personal. To the average person it would seem pretty meaningless. One thing that is sure is that God/the universe communicates to us in many different ways including symbols. That’s what makes this q...

First of all, I want to point out that Jesus gave us his life before he was sacrificed on the cross. People like myself that believe in reincarnation, don’t necessarily consider death to be a sacrifice. People that lead their life to teach others, as opposed to seeking isolated personal happiness, are living a sacrifice. Jesus was one of the greatest teachers known to this earth and he gave his life in order to teach us all how to live. In that way, you could say that he saved many of us by giving us guidelines on how to save our soul. Again, most people that believe in reincarnation don’t believe in eternal damnation. I do believe in a state of energy re-newel that recycles conscious energy thereby converting a negative outcome into energy to realize another equation. Meaning that, if a life energy is in conflict with the nature of the universe and can’t be fixed, it will be ‘destroyed’ (recycled). Teaching how to move with the flow of nature, which he taught, saves you from this re...

The main spiritual exercises I practice are Hatha Yoga (the practice of breathing and asanas or poses), meditation and life! As far as the second part of the question, I practice them as much I can! The reason why I say it like that is that in my life, there are many periods of time where I don’t have the time to fully practice yoga. There are other times when I don’t feel like practicing. We are all different and many people need ‘external’ spiritual practice to help them balance out their materialistic side. Others and myself often need to practice things that are more down to earth to help ground us to the physical world we live in (it’s more than physical - but physical is an aspect of it). My belief is aspiring to a balance between male and female energy, my goal is not to ‘evolve’ out of the physical body. I find that life has played out for me in a way where I practice Hatha Yoga in phases, as needed and afforded by time. I would say on average about 3 months a year. Hatha yoga...

The flower of life looks like the diagram below (courtesy of Wikipedia): It is a powerful symbol considered by many to contain all of the answers to the universe. The earliest records of it date back to 645 BC but I suspect that it’s origin dates back much further. Examples of it have been found all over the world, across many different cultures. One of the many things that I find interesting about it is that it can be constructed with one stick, in the sand. You can hold one end of the stick and turn it to create a circle. By placing equal sized circles concentric to it (touching its border), exactly six will fit giving us a total of 7 circles. Once that diagram is made, all angles can be interpolated. One could measure any angle only beginning with a stick and some sand! Notice that the center of each circle is on the circumference of six surrounding circles of the same diameter. Then to complete it, we circumscribe the circles inside of a larger circle. Before my experience, I had ...

Love is not a noun it’s a verb! Love is the act of acceptance. When you accept someone as a whole, as opposed to parts, you are loving them. Acceptance, as it applies to accepting people, is dynamic since the person being accepted is dynamic. Now let’s break down acceptance into two flavors. The first is accepting them as a person and the second is accepting them in our lives. If my past conversations with people were any indication, I would say that not many people will agree with my definition of love! Anyway, love is accepting the person. Here is an example, many of us have relatives that we do love, that we accept for their good and bad, BUT we can’t seem to get the bang for our buck in terms of time vs. positivity. In other words, we have more positive things to spend our time on then interacting with that person. That doesn’t mean we don’t love them. I always hear people say, “I love you but I’m not in love with you.” I absolutely disagree with that statement. I don’t believe the...

If referring to advaita, then the duality that you’re referring to would be between Self (Atman) and the Whole (Brahman). The concept is that when you are able to combine the two seemingly separate parts and experience them as one, you will attain a state of nirvana(moksha). I absolutely agree to that concept because nirvana is that awareness. In my eyes, one way that religions can be categorized is between those that promote enlightenment/nirvana and those that don’t. Even within Buddhism, not all schools focus on an individual attaining enlightenment. For now let’s discuss the ones that do. If the masters of these schools have attained this state (I’m assuming they have) of enlightenment and experienced nirvana by different means from each other, then none of the means can be considered absolute. That means that none of the schools can argue the validity of another schools way of attainment. The same thing goes for me or any other individual who has had the experience without a maste...

Well, first of all, we all have access to the answers. Second of all, answers are still based on perspective so they are only as valid as our perspective allows them to be. So mine, of course, have that same limitation and are in no way any more or less valid than yours. For instance, a child’s reason for going to school may be that their guardian is making them. That is, to the child. Behind that reasoning, in the United States it’s the law. The guardian may be forcing them because of the law, because they don’t have time to teach them, because they think that school is important. The reason that this country created the law could be questioned. After all that, what does education mean to the universe and humankind? Even in this basic example you can see how difficult and flexible an answer can be. However, I can give you an accurate answer depending on how the question is asked. Using the same example I would use this Q: Why do children go to school, to them. A: The child goes to sch...