The use of the word “love” has almost become unfashionable. It is as if we recognise that despite humanity’s obsessive focus on the word (especially in a sexual connotation), its essential nature has remained relatively unknown and unexpressed.

In response to the 11th commandment - “love one another” - we have fallen into an embarrassed silence. The 11th commandment seems to symbolise even in the shape of its number the relationship between two ones: 1+1; two “I”s; .

This relationship is the doorway between the two pillars. In order to enter into that elusive mystery, it is necessary to let go of those old forms and patterns of relationship that are based on illusion.

The great tool for attending to that ‘letting go’ is the process of ‘forgiveness’.

Forgiveness has often been portrayed as something that you do ‘for’ another person who has ‘wronged’ you. Alternatively it has been explained as something you do ‘for’ yourself in order to release ties to negative emotions.

Both these explanations focus on one of the “I”s, rather than the energy of relationship itself.

Forgiveness is an act of trust and surrender to the power of relationship that transcends either “I”.

Far from being an act of naivete or self service, forgiveness is an act of tremendous courage that affirms and thereby welcomes the energy of love into human experience.

That love allows a celebration of difference in any society. It provides the one breath or ‘unanimity’ which can animate a family or a nation -- and at the same time it protects us from the counterfeit expression of love, which, lacking the breath of spirit, requires uniformity in its stead. True Union differentiates.