The Karma of Unforgiveness

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different."

Sigh! The dreams would not give up throwing up the idea. I saw the dream again. Rather, the same person in new dreams - always there, like a wallpaper in the room - usually not interacting with my main dream that actively, but there. They say if you see someone from the past in the dreams, you have unresolved issues with them.

I talked to my friend Dr. H. M. about it. She and I have taken up the activity of analysing our dreams together. With time, not only are we improving our skills, but adding to our repertoire new techniques and angles of analyses. She believed that the person in question, a friend from the past, may be a symbol for an associated concept.

I do see symbols more often than I see persons from the waking life. Which is why these dreams have caught my attention: I do not see real-life people in my dreams, I see concepts enacted visually. But that is another matter. What has concerned me more than the dream business itself is their content, and the ever-present character.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching, well, Harry Potter: The Goblet of Fire. Don't ask why I like HP, but I have always liked fairy-tale movies, magic, and like subjects. I do like Harry simply because he's a wizard - and I love fairies and wizards and people who do unusual things. In one scene, a matured Harry can't help but suppress smile when a thoughtless Hermione remarks at her athletic boyfriend, "Victor and I didn't talk. In fact, he and I don't talk at all. Victor is more of a physical type." I missed the pun too, until an embarrassed Hermione quickly realized, and Harry cracked but the gentlest of smiles, without a remark.

And somehow that was it. For a very vague association of this scene with the innocence of my own teenage years, I am ready to accept the message of my dreams. I am ready to close the unfinished business. I have decided to forgive the person that my dreams are concerned with.

The Indian thinking states that "unfinished business" creates a karma - a kind of sycle that must close or end, or it will go on. If it's not inherently evil, it's certainly very sad - for it's all about memory and none about possibility. The karma of our relationship has haunted many persons involved. I recently learnt that the karma had come back to hurt once again, another person involved in this network of teenage relationships and hurt-doing. I think, I have had my part of the karma's retribution. So did the person in the dream. So did another person I later related to. So has another person they later related.

I have been watching closely, and fate has been coming, again and again, to hurt everyone involved in this web of broken friendships, betrayals, and losing a good thing for nothing just because a group of childhood friends refused to grow up at the right time. The fate, the karma, and the dreams are all coming with a message: this cycle has to break: someone, somewhere, must cease to inflict hurt back and forth for things of the past. Someone, somewhere, must forever clean their heart of grudge. Someone, somewhere, must choose to step out of this cycle of childish jealousy, causing pain, suffering retribution, remembering bad things for years, forgetting good things - like the slips of tongues among two friends who were once as innocently connected as the magical Harry and Hermione... or any two children friends - and letting dreams stage their purposeful drama. Someone in this network of karma-stricken persons has to forgive.

I will be that someone. I have decided after years of needless, pointless losing and breaking of perfectly gentle and respectful relationship amongst a group of talented, beautiful persons - that we all deserve better. We all deserve to move on. And that it cannot happen unless we understand the depth of our own heart: we are all, in our hearts, kind but afraid to accept that, willing to let go of the past but unable to take the first step. And that this very dual feeling is leading everyone involved to be forever stuck in this cycle.

I have forgiven - myself first, for I was part of the cycle of wrong-doing and I got my just reward several times over. The person in my dream, for he deserves this and better - he deserves happiness and a use of his talents; and by Allah, he too received a severe retribution. And the associated everyone, for their continued bad luck means that my grudge is their bad karma...

Allah says, "Cooperate with the faithful in good deeds." With a group of people who were once fine friends, I cannot but only cooperate from now on in good will, and good deed. What one sends into the world comes back to them, and I want to send forgiveness in the world. Where I realize my good intention will not be well-received, I will still send forgiveness, so as not to get resentment. It is strange how these things come and go.

Dr. H. M. says, "Pay attention to your feelings in the dreams." My dreams are not of anger or grudge nor of jealousy, but an amused letting go, that is quite not indifference, but an unpossessive attachment. Of a fresh relationship. My dreams have told me, I am over. I am over a long, long cycle of the karma of unforgiveness. My dreams tell me that I have understood why Allah says, "The wronged is rightful in taking a revenge, but it is better that you forgive, if you understand."