cheating: living from shortcuts to pitfalls

CHEAT CHEAT
JUST TO BEAT
PASS THE PRESENT
FAIL THE FUTURE

Everybody wants to get ahead. Needs and desires influence actions. What appeals to us affects our perceptions. Alluring ideas that captivate our minds can compromise our moral and ethical standards. Finding shortcuts and taking advantage of them is becoming an accepted and honorable practice! Cheating is a part of our culture, attitude and lifestyles. At some level it seems like everybody cheats. Yes we've cheated too. To gain an advantage or avoid the undesirable we feel inclined to cheat. Even when our intentions are honorable we may find ourselves cheating just to  keep up with the "real cheaters."  Unfair is more of a perceived position or state then an actual one. There is no substitute for righteousness. Desire and Competition creates the environment to cheat. Pride  and passion provides a motive to cheat. Reasoning and logic shows us ways to cheat. Cheating is a spirit. Remember we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This spirit is so subtle that its indistinct devious origins are often disguised until the manifestations arise. Having been victimized in the past, we should now be able to see how cutting lines, sneaking in movies, not paying fares, lying on applications, borrowing answers from others on tests and being unfaithful in relationships are all related. Robbing ourselves of integrity cheats us out of the power over many areas of our lives. The price we pay now is much higher than the cost of honesty then. There are cheat sheets for games, we cheat on our diets, we cheat on our taxes, we cheat in sports, gambling and in games. It doesn't take long to determine the areas in our lives that we've cheated on and/or are cheating in. We cannot go back and change the past but we can break the cycle that our past is projecting into our future.