Love

The second effect that bad behavior has on liberation is in the form of Karma that most people are familiar with, the kind that effects our daily lives. When we engage in behaviors that harm ourselves or others, we create the conditions for further harm to happen to us. It really is that simple. What that eventual harm might be is nearly impossible to tell (and totally a waste of time to speculate about), but suffice it to say that if you do something that you know has caused harm to another person you have just set the stage for something negative to happen to you. This is not meant in a mystical sense at all. It is very direct and simple. If you exercise you set the conditions for good health to happen to you, if you text while driving you set the conditions for a car accident to happen to you, and if you intentionally create harm you set the conditions for harm to happen to you in some form. So, how does all this interfere with awakening? In a pretty no-nonsense type of way: if you are constantly dealing with the fallout from negative actions, how are you going to meditate?

Also:

Everything, literally everything, has a consequence. They can be psychological or situational. The problem for most of us is that we are not clear-minded enough to connect the dots and see the pattern of cause and effect. It actually takes a tremendous amount of cognitive horsepower and mindfulness to do that. The effects of many of our actions do not show up in a neat linear fashion. Rather, our intentions set the conditions for the consequences to occur at some point down the road and over time it becomes nearly impossible to trace the effect back to the cause.