What can you share with us about the potential consequences of making an ethical compromise to serve selfish interests in business, or to exploit a situation within an organization to gain an advantage over someone you are competing with?

Any deliberate bending of the rules, illegality, or selfish manipulation will trigger a karmic backlash at some point and then you will be met with a taste of your own medicine. It may come quickly, it may not come until another lifetime, but pay you will for your transgressions, because this is seen to by the universe and is automatic. This is the major difference between the light being living in a divine realm, in a divine way, and the human being. The light being would find taking action of this kind unthinkable because they clearly see karma at work and understand this—there is no refuge, there is no escape, there is no possibility of avoiding the rebalancing of their negative choices. There can be acts of forgiveness and divine grace to help a person do better and avoid the worst of penalties, or even to bypass the need for any suffering whatsoever, but this requires a high reason and purpose for going around the machinery of the universe seeing to the reassignment of energies to those responsible—you will be lucky if you are forgiven and escape this seeming retribution.

In most cases, you will not be given any special consideration and karma will do its worst. This makes it a great tool for keeping things on track by holding people accountable and eventually they may learn their lessons. In the meantime, this is the cause of much grief, and many business failings are a karmic destiny built upon the past where someone might have hurt a competitor in business in another lifetime and enjoyed riches and comfort at the other’s expense in that life. But now, in the current lifetime, it catches up to them and they may lose their business in just the worst way, at just the worst possible time, compounding the damage to involve this perpetrator’s loved ones in their legacy of obligation, so all will suffer and this will be witnessed by the evildoer.

Walking on a divine path avoids all of these unpleasant outcomes by not creating a karmic debt in the first place. It is mostly a matter of treating others with respect, putting yourself in their shoes, and endeavoring to do no harm in the same way you would wish to be respected and treated fairly. That can be seen as conflicting with one’s business interests, but this need not be the case. When a business is operating in an open and fair manner, there will be goods and services that can be ranked and valued in various ways and when the proper perspective is understood on both sides, there need not be hesitation or reservation, or regret about getting involved in a transaction because people will have a fair and honest understanding of what is being offered and the terms of the arrangement will have been spelled out clearly, accurately, and agreed to in advance. That is simply being in tune with business ethics and being honest in how one follows through when an agreement has been made.

This is not asking too much of people. It will go a long way to not only improving the world but helping you succeed in your endeavors. If you wish to be successful but you create many karmic dilemmas for yourself by cutting corners, manipulating and harming others to gain tactical advantage in some way and cause pain, inconvenience, and loss to others as a consequence, you can be sure that at some point you will stumble and your losses will be even heavier when karma rolls around.