Spiritual Meaning of Dreams About Cheating

One of the touchiest subjects you can raise with anybody involves cheating. Given this reality, it is no surprise that getting to the real spiritual meaning of dreams about cheating takes quite a bit of work and patience.

What makes this a very sensitive topic is the fact that all of us cheat in one way or another.

Everybody’s looking for a shortcut.

When presented with an easier way to go about something that usually takes time, effort, discipline, and focus, many people would choose to take the easy way out.

This is why the idea of cheating, in whatever form, upsets and makes us uncomfortable.

It is a mirror that somebody holds against our face without our consent.

We don’t like the image.

If you’ve been trying to figure out the spiritual meaning of cheating in dreams, you’ve come to the right place.

It turns out that the spiritual meaning of dreams about cheating is neither simple nor straightforward as you might have imagined.

The General Meaning of Cheating In Dreams

Cheating in dreams is a tricky dream image because it is both a projection and a metaphor.

On the one hand, it is a projection of our desires.

Who doesn’t want the “good life”? Who doesn’t want the very best life has to offer?

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.

That is the problem.

Cheating is a way to be the best without putting in the work, sacrifice, and perseverance expected to reach any worthwhile goal.

You get to have your cake and eat it too.

We desire the button that enables us to open alternative paths that free us from the boredom, self-doubt, and discomfort of putting in work day after day, week after week, and month after month, only for our efforts to go unrewarded.

Who wants to deal with that?

It’s not much of a stretch to say that we all desire shortcuts, but the problem is we don’t want to admit it.

We also fall easily into hypocrisy.

When cheating in whatever form it takes becomes a subject of discussion, we put on a face, a social appearance people expect from us.

So we uphold the law, talk about how people should dot their i’s, cross their t’s, and do things as expected.

We join the chorus of people who say we should color within tight boundaries.

But we still have this desire within us for an easy way out.

It is comical that we all have it to some degree, which brings me to the second general meaning of cheating on dreams, the sense of guilt.

Guilt can involve many levels.

Some people feel guilty just for thinking about stuff they think they shouldn’t do.

They didn’t lift a finger to do it; they did not even talk about doing it, but they still felt guilty.

You understand where I’m coming from if you’re from a strong, traditional religious background, and I’m talking about Catholic or conservative Protestant denominations or certain sects of Islam.

You’re not yourself in certain contexts and spiritual traditions.

Instead, you are a manifestation or outgrowth of a long family name.

You feel tremendous guilt if you do something that shames the family name.

If that’s what you operate with and you’re moving within a culture of shame, just thinking about “haram” or “forbidden things” is enough to make you suffer debilitating guilt.

The guilt would have been tolerable if it were on this level only, but the problem is it is transformed in many ways in your life, which can turn you into a toxic person.

Guilt can also turn into laziness, crab mentality, backstabbing, and hypocrisy.

Dreaming about cheating means you are connecting with something that is seared into your DNA.

There is no avoiding it.

A part of you prefers to take the path of pleasure when given a choice between pain and pleasure.

It is a no-brainer, but you can’t handle it.

The following general meaning of cheating in dreams involves very low self-esteem.

When you look into a room of people, you can be counted on to rate yourself the last.

It doesn’t matter what your criterion is; it could be smarts, looks, wealth, potential, or whatever, you can be counted on always to locate yourself at the bottom of the totem pole.

This low self-esteem can come from your parents.

Maybe they emotionally abandoned you.

While they were present physically and provided for you materially, they were emotionally absent.

Fathers tend to do this.

This can also come from you constantly comparing yourself with your friends.

Please understand that you are guaranteed to feel like shit if you check your Facebook feed.

Why? People post the highlights of their lives on their Facebook.

Do you think people will post about how they’re going through a violent divorce?

Do you think somebody will post about their drug addiction and how they almost overdosed?

Of course not.

People post pictures of themselves holding up the Leaning Tower of Piza or going up the sidesteps of Machu Picchu.

Or they would post the corner office because they got promoted to CEO.

To make matters worse, what do you compare their posts with?

That’s right, you compare them with your frustrations.

You see a post of somebody who got promoted in her Fortune 500 company in the US, and here you are, slaving away in Hongkong at a dead-end job.

All these feed into your low self-esteem because low self-esteem is a habit.

And if you think you’re at the bottom of the totem pole, think again.

Many people, and it doesn’t matter where they’re from or their education and income, would kill to be in your place.

You may be as poor as a church mouse, but somebody dying because they can’t find a kidney donor would envy your health.

It’s that basic, but this is lost because you see yourself as a cosmic victim of these comparisons.

But who’s making the comparison?

Not the universe; it’s got bigger fish to fry.

It’s you.

What Does It Mean to Dream About Your Partner Cheating?

This is probably one of the most common contextual dreams about cheating.

The good news (and you can sigh a breath of relief here) is that dreams are rarely prophetic.

So seeing your partner cheat in your dreams does not mean there is infidelity in your relationship.

Instead, your subconscious uses this imagery to tell you that you’re gripped with regret and second thoughts about the consequences you must live with.

Pay close attention to the previous sentence, “the consequences you must live with” what triggered those consequences?

That’s right, your decisions did.

You are agonizing over your life, but you chose that life, which is the last thing you want to hear.

Many people want to be treated like they’re victims.

They like to have a pat on the back or hear comforting words because they want to feel they don’t have to change.

They know inside they chose their paths, the blowback, the aftermath and their results, but they don’t want to hear about that.

They only want a chorus to comfort them as they say to themselves repeatedly, “Poor me.”

You’re caught in a pity party in one area of your life.

Your subconscious has chosen the strong image of your partner cheating on you to bring your attention to guilt issues.

The good news is you can get out of this.

It will not be easy or painless, but you can get out of this.

How? Make different decisions.

The difference between “better decisions” and “bad ones” depends on you because it’s all contextual.

You have to step up.

If you’re unhappy with your income, health, relationships, and yourself, you can do something about it.

But you’d rather feel guilty and remorseful and engage in self-pity, which is counter-productive.

The good news is you will get sick and tired of it, just as a drunk finally gets sick and tired of finding his face in a toilet bowl.

You will get sick of it eventually.

What Does It Mean to Cheat On Your Partner In Your Dream?

If the roles were switched and you see yourself cheating on your partner in your dream, this indicates that you have second thoughts regarding the path you’ve taken in life, and you’re wasting your time imagining alternatives.

A friend of mine chose to work in finance, involving a tremendous amount of analysis, and he makes six figures.

However, his friends make much more money working with crypto, so my friend feels he’s taken the wrong path.

And whenever we talk, he comes up with all these scenarios where he quits his job and becomes a crypto billionaire.

That’s the long and short of it, but you see what’s happening here.

He is using the emotional high of imagining himself as a crypto billionaire without lifting a finger to make a decision and choosing a different path.

So he is not looking to realize his dream; he is milking it for the temporary emotional high he gets when he imagines himself out of his current circumstances.

The sad reality is many people would kill to be in the same position as him, but he does not see that.

He has become a victim of comparison because you never compare yourself to people above you if you don’t want to feel like a victim.

What Does It Mean to Cheat Your Siblings In Your Dream?

If you see yourself playing cards or dividing up inheritance with your siblings in your dream and you cheat them, this indicates you have unresolved issues with people close to you.

Maybe they said something that rubbed you the wrong way or did something that negatively impacted you.

Unfortunately, you never had the inner strength to call them out on it.

Instead, you swept it under the rug and hoped against hope that you’ll forget about it, but you never did.

Worse, it’s impacting your self-esteem and how you get along with others.

For example, if a father keeps calling his daughter ugly or fat and that nobody would want her, how do you think would that impact the daughter’s relationship with men?

How would the daughter see men, and how do they desire women?

Similarly, if a mother keeps telling her son that he’s lousy and useless like his father, how would this impact his relationship with wealth, ambition, and drive?

These and other variations to different degrees are all issues that can be manifested in dreams in the form of cheating in a family context.

What Does It Mean to Cheat Your Colleagues at Work?

You are suffering from a serious case of schadenfreude.

This indicates an emotional state where you feel happy when something bad happens.

On the one hand, you think you’re not alone in misery.

On the other, you think their setbacks will somehow benefit you.

This is not something you should feel guilty about because that is natural.

The question is how you deal with it and channel it so that it doesn’t make you unproductive or toxic.

How do you work with this feeling in such a way it becomes positive.

The reason this is natural is it is seared into our DNA.

Imagine two cavemen walking in grasslands, and out comes a bear.

The first caveman starts running when the second caveman tells him, “You’re never going to outrun the bear, and you know that.”

The first caveman replies, “I know that. I just need to outrun you.”

That mentality is seared into your DNA because that thinking helped our species survive.

Whether we accept it or not, it is a guilty realization.

Learn to recognize and channel schadenfreude because you will never get rid of it.

Try to turn it into something positive.

What Does It Mean to Cheat On Your Children In Your Dreams?

If you cheat your kids in a game by tricking them, or in the case with older children where you cheat them out of something they’ve earned, this indicates you have issues with authority.

On one level, you don’t want to become your parents.

Many daughters don’t want to become their mothers, and many sons don’t want to become their fathers.

The question is: do you believe that will be the case and that there’s nothing you can do about it?

Or you can ask yourself, “Why do I resent my mother?”

The truth comes out when you start by asking the simple question, “Why?”

You will realize it’s not about them but about you and the coping mechanisms you’ve adopted as you get older.

Seeing yourself cheating your kids in your dream is a big one because this can open doors for deep healing.

What Does It Mean to Cheat In An Exam?

You like to believe that if nobody sees something, it doesn’t exist, and you’re free.

This is reminiscent of the old Philosophy 101 question: if a tree fell in the woods and nobody was around to hear it, did it fall?

Many people joke about that question, but it strikes at a core reality.

Is there an absolute truth free from our ability to measure, observe, and reduce into equations?

If you’re an empiricist, you would say, “Well, I wasn’t there.”

But in reality, there is such a thing as truth because it doesn’t need your permission and consent.

Dreaming of cheating on an exam, you are confronted with the truth that you can do anything if nobody’s around.

This is dangerous because you are splitting your waking life into a hidden one and one that everyone can see.

Be very careful because your character will always come through.

People might think you’re the second coming of Mother Theresa, but if you’re selfish, greedy, and a backstabber, it’ll come out.

The first step is understanding why there’s a disconnect between your public face and who you are inside.

You can work on this, and if you’re serious about it, this can become your strength.

Living with authenticity can be your superpower.

Why? You’re rare because most people would rather play the old game of living hidden lives until they are exposed.

What Does It Mean to Cheat Your Neighbors In A Dream?

One of the most common ways you can cheat your neighbors is by using their wifi.

When we first moved to our office, we didn’t put a password on our high-speed wifi connection.

Little did we know that an office down the hall was downloading tons of files using our wifi.

We were being charged based on data load every month.

Since we were using the internet only for sending files to the US and Europe, we were floored when we got our internet bill.

We added two and two together and discovered that our neighboring office was doing data management using our wifi.

Talk about a hard lesson to learn.

When you cheat your neighbors in your dream, please understand that you will always be found out.

This is an indication, not necessarily of you cheating, but your tendency to try to get away with things.

All of us have this tendency, but how do you channel it in such a productive way.

One way my company and I channelled it was we looked at cheats as hacks.

So instead of doing Excel a certain way, we tried to look at hacks to make whatever resources we have produce more in less time.

Instead of feeling guilty about wanting to take shortcuts, use it as your superpower while respecting other people’s rights.

If you have this tendency, do not steal from other people.

Instead, you can think about producing more, faster at a lower cost.

If you can do that in all areas of your life, you can save money and time, spend more time with those you care about and invest more in yourself.

It can also go a long way in reducing your opportunity costs.

A “cheating” mindset is not necessarily a bad thing.

You only have to locate it in the right area of your life and manifest it in the right form so that it produces goods for yourself and those around you.

What Does It Mean to Cheat In A Drinking Competition?

Seeing yourself cheating in a drinking contest indicates you have issues in your spiritual life.

You think that you only need to follow the script that your parents and religious authorities handed you, and things will fall into place.

This is called religion by works.

The problem is it doesn’t work because the universe operates by grace.

Have you noticed that many seemingly bad people are blessed while the good ones are damned?

You ask, “How can that be? Where are justice and fairness?”

There is such a thing as grace, meaning there’s the sovereignty of the universe you cannot explain.

Trying to understand it is like trying to pour an ocean into a tiny hole of sand you dug up on the beach.

By understanding how grace works and how God does things out of His own will, we know that, in the end, things will work out for those who love God (Romans 8:28).

It’s not by your works that you are saved but by the grace of God.

In other words, you cannot buy your way into heaven because God does not owe you anything.

You can pretend you’re a good person, but that will not help you.

Your subconscious sends you metaphors about spiritual things when you see yourself cheating in a drinking contest or any contest involving intoxicants.

It’s not about intoxication but how you make sense of the big issues of existence.