Paul Brian
Have you cheated or been cheated on?
Then you know how much it hurts.
But what if it has longer-term spiritual effects, too…?
Let’s ask what we’re all thinking:
Does cheating create bad karma?
1) Cheating is a form of self-betrayal
When most of us think of cheating, we think of the damage that the cheater does to his or her other half.
The lies, the tears, the feelings of unworthiness and being disrespected at such a deep level obviously hurt.
But from the perspective of a cheater, even one who’s never caught, cheating is really a form of self-betrayal.
When you cheat you are also cheating yourself.
You’re being too much of a coward to end a relationship you don’t like and trying to double dip to get emotional validation in more than one place and more than one relationship.
It’s weak and it creates bad karma…But not in the way most people think of karma (something I’ll explain further down).
2) Cheating destroys your most important relationship
One of the ways that cheating creates bad karma is by sabotaging your most important relationship.
It’s not the one you have with your significant other…
The truth is, most of us overlook an incredibly important element in our lives:
The relationship we have with ourselves.
I learnt about this from the shaman Rudá Iandê. In his genuine, free video on cultivating healthy relationships, he gives you the tools to plant yourself at the center of your world.
He covers some of the major mistakes most of us make in our relationships, such as codependency habits and unhealthy expectations. Mistakes most of us make without even realizing it.
So why am I recommending Rudá’s life-changing advice?
Well, he uses techniques derived from ancient shamanic teachings, but he puts his own modern-day twist on them. He may be a shaman, but his experiences in love weren’t much different to yours and mine.
Until he found a way to overcome these common issues. And that’s what he wants to share with you.
So if you’re ready to make that change today and cultivate healthy, loving relationships, relationships you know you deserve, check out his simple, genuine advice.
Click here to watch the free video.
3) Cheating doesn’t create bad karma in the way most people think
Part of the issue with sabotaging yourself is that you’re guaranteeing your life will be disappointing.
The truth is that most people misunderstand what Buddhism means by “karma.” They think it more or less means getting what you deserve.
It doesn’t.
It means getting reflections back to us of the kind of energy and actions we are putting out into the world.
It doesn’t always mean that actual “bad things” will happen to us if we hurt people for example. It can just mean that we struggle to find love because we have severed our own link to the love inside us.
By the same token, helping people around you doesn’t mean “good” things will happen to you. It simply means that you yourself will grow as a person and feel joy for the proactive role you have in the world.
The reward is the action.
“Karma is simply energy. It’s our intentional thoughts and actions. The energy we generate now and in the future will affect us.
“It has nothing to do with reward or punishment.
“Karma is unbiased, and it’s ours to control.”
If you cheat you will definitely be creating bad karma. But it’s not as simple as meaning that you will be cheated on down the road or that something negative will happen to you.
It’s a little more subtle (and worse) than that…
4) What kind of energy does cheating create?
Given that karma is simply energy that we create, the logical next step is to ask what kind of energy cheating creates.
When somebody cheats on someone, they create four main qualities of energy:
- Betrayal of trust
- Discarding and devaluation of love
- Feelings of unworthiness in the cheated person
- Anger, sadness and despair in the cheated person
These are not very easy emotions to create. They are full of pain and tumult.
They’re not “bad” per se, since considering feelings “good” or “bad” is part of the kind of binary division that’s increasing suffering and self-delusion in our world.
But they’re difficult. They hurt. They can take time to get over and lead to energy blockage and hopelessness.
So if you’re creating this kind of energy and promoting it into being, it’s fair to then ask what this leads to.
Which brings us to our next point…
5) What type of bad karma does cheating cause?
Cheating creates a karma of inner disappointment and betrayal.
If you are the one who cheated, you are creating a lack of trust not only with other people, but also with yourself.
“Karma is an action, not a result. The future is not set in stone.
You can change the course of your life right now by changing your volitional (intentional) acts and self-destructive patterns.”
By cheating on someone, you’re basically building a house on a shaky foundation.
There’s still the chance to change and become a different kind of person, but it sets you back quite a bit.
By cheating, you’ve written the equivalent of a spiritual bad check…
And it’s going to get bounced and lead to you getting kicked out from a lot of places, situations and relationships:
Including your own self-respect.
6) Thinking harder on karma
The thing about karma is this: it doesn’t stop or reach some “plateau” at which point you’ve made it and life is now perfect.
Karma is energy and movement. It keeps going and evolving.
Even if you’ve met the love of your life, there are still going to be challenges and lessons in that relationship that you didn’t expect.
One or both of you may still decide it isn’t going to work out and break the other’s heart.
The thing about a relationship where you’ve been cheated on or cheated someone is this:
What karma led to it?
If karma never stops, then what kind of energy and emotions led to a situation of the kind you’re now experiencing?
Did the person who get cheated on have “bad” karma?
Well, no! But they did have patterns and energies from past relationships that somehow let them trust and fall in love with a cheater.
The bad karma was the situation itself and its result, not any kind of divine justice.
7) Will most cheaters face any real punishment for what they did?
Related to the last point, it’s worth digging further into whether cheaters will be punished for their sleazy behavior.
As I’ve said earlier, karma is really far more about the energy you put out there and the reality and standards you create for yourself…
Than it is about getting external punishment or lightning bolts out of the blue.
The truth is that there isn’t some earthly “price” that’s always paid by a cheater.
But sometimes there are still serious consequences that could be considered karma in the typical sense…
Marie Miguel discusses this in an interesting article where she writes that:
“Instead of it being due to a magic force, karma for a cheater can come in the form of a natural consequence to their actions.”
8) Some potential bad consequences of cheating
No matter how much we think of karma in a more general and spiritual way, we can’t deny our human desire for just a tiny bit of payback.
So let’s take a look at just some of the awful stuff that can happen to a person when they decide to cheat (get the popcorn):
- Sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) can be one unfortunate result of an extracurricular dalliance
- Breaking up someone else’s relationship and getting caught, beaten or publicly shamed for it
- Getting a terrible reputation for being a cheater that spreads around town and discourages future dates
- Depression and regret can be another aftereffect of sticking your private parts where they don’t belong
Of course, none of this is guaranteed to happen.
There are people who cheat and outwardly get away with it. Plus, if the cheater has still been sleeping with his or her partner that STD could go both ways…
But it’s still a bit reassuring to know that sometimes there’s at least a little bit of payback for the ugly act of cheating.
9) Good vs. bad karma in relationships
The idea of good and bad karma in relationships is fishy in general.
It’s hard to trace it out in a tit-for-tat kind of way that most people think about karma.
But nonetheless, this concept does matter and does exist in a certain way.
Having good karma and energy will tend to draw positive and enriching relationships your way, in the sense that being fulfilled and full of joy will tend to attract more of that.
Many people get roped into toxic and horrible relationships not because they “deserve” it, but because their energy of victimhood and pain is like the scent of fresh blood to a predator.
That’s why developing personal power is so important to not getting manipulated.
As Tina Fey writes at Ideapod:
“Karma is real and plays a huge role not just in your romantic relationships but also in your relationships at work, within the family, and with friends.
“Good Karma will let your relationships flourish and make your life harmonious and peaceful.
“But it doesn’t mean that all your relationships will last.”
10) The problem with believing too much in karma
The problem with believing too much in karma is that it can serve as cheap wish-fulfillment fantasy and lead in a cycle of victimhood.
If you’ve been cheated on, you hope and expect the one who did it to get some outer payback.
If you cheated, or want to cheat, you think about karma as a kind of cruel schoolmaster who you need to outwit or appease to make up for what you did or want to do…
But it’s not like that…
And people need to grow up.
Some people who believe in karma literally engage in a bit too much wishful thinking.
Here at Hack Spirit we’re more interested in the truth than just feeding people easy answers that they want to hear.
As Suzannah Weiss writes about here, there are even psychics who claim that you are paying a “karmic debt” when you get cheated on.
Come on now, that’s crazy talk.
Karma is energy that’s created by good or bad deeds. But the idea that it leads to outward results is far too simplistic.
Much of the time the deepest damage done by bad karma is to tear someone up inside, rather than outside.
11) A fascinating perspective from Islamic theology
One of the most fascinating figures of the 20th Century was an Jewish man called Leopold Weiss who was born in Lviv, Ukraine in 1900.
As I reported here from Ukraine in 2019, Weiss went on to convert to Islam, changing his name to Muhammad Asad.
He later became a world famous theologian and a foundational figure in the Muslim world, making highly-esteemed translations of the Qur’an and commentary which is still valued today.
One of the things which Asad pointed out is that the Qur’an says that wrongdoing is not always punished in this life in any way we can see.
Often, betrayal in relationships and other evil actions result in more subtle – but even worse – effects.
They cause God to remove situations, people and experiences which have the capacity to bring us true joy.
As Akbar Zab notes on Twitter, Asad emphasized that:
“The Qur’an stresses the fact that every evil deed has a reaction against him who commits it.
“Either by depriving him of the affection of those who surround him thus deepening his inner loneliness, or by creating circumstances which make the achievement of real happiness impossible.”
Needless to say, if this is true it’s very bad news for the cheater…
And it also relates closely to the way I was discussing karma above.
12) Do cheaters ever really “learn their lesson?”
Sometimes, yes.
As Bailey Anastas writes here, she cheated and then later had some very unpleasant consequences that taught her a lesson.
She bowed to pressure from her family to be with a compatible man called Arya and left behind the person she really loved, Jason.
The end result was that she broke up with Arya and Jason no longer trusted her.
“Within months, I learned that I was being cheated on by Arya, this ‘impeccable man,’ who I never loved anyway.
“He was seeing several women, some of them prostitutes. I hated my parents for being fooled by him.
“But mostly, I hated myself for obliging. At this point I couldn’t contact Jason.”
When you cheat and aren’t true to yourself and your feelings, you burn bridges.
You erase a vital integrity in yourself and dim your spark and your belief in life and in yourself.
13) A better way to think about this
It’s tempting to think of a cheater getting what they deserve and a cheated person finding true love.
But life is very unfair and this isn’t always the case, at least not outwardly.
This can create a lot of pain and confusion.
So how can you overcome this insecurity that’s been nagging you?
The most effective way is to tap into your personal power.
You see, we all have an incredible amount of power and potential within us, but most of us never tap into it. We become bogged down in self-doubt and limiting beliefs. We stop doing what brings us true happiness.
I learned this from the shaman Rudá Iandê. He’s helped thousands of people align work, family, spirituality, and love so they can unlock the door to their personal power.
He has a unique approach that combines traditional ancient shamanic techniques with a modern-day twist. It’s an approach that uses nothing but your own inner strength – no gimmicks or fake claims of empowerment.
Because true empowerment needs to come from within.
In his excellent free video, Rudá explains how you can create the life you’ve always dreamed of and increase attraction in your partners, and it’s easier than you might think.
So if you’re tired of living in frustration, dreaming but never achieving, and of living in self-doubt, you need to check out his life-changing advice.
Click here to watch the free video.
The bottom line on cheating and karma
The bottom line on cheating and karma is that when you understand what karma really is and how it can work then yes, cheating does create bad karma.
The problem is that the word is misunderstood and misused so much that it’s not that useful to use it in this context.
A better way to think of cheating is to tap into your personal power, like I mentioned above.
Furthermore, remember never to gaslight yourself or blame the victim.
If you’ve been cheated on it’s wrong and you have the right to walk away.
“It always helps to know you’re not in control of other people’s decisions.
“But that doesn’t make the pain of being cheated on go away.
“And it certainly doesn’t excuse the indiscretion even if infidelity is commonplace in our culture and more prevalent among men.”
