The source of our title is the ancient Hippocratic oath, which dates from the fourth century B.C. It contains one of the cardinal principles of all medicine, summarized in these five "little" words: Do no harm to anyone. This statement can also be used as a succinct reminder for all students of A Course in Miracles who seek to apply its principles to living in the world.

In this article we shall go from the general principle Do no harm to anyone to its specific expressions in surveying how we can better understand and implement the purpose of the above statement. We can begin by asking ourselves: Exactly what does it mean to me not to harm anyone, and moreover, how can I live my life based and patterned on this principle? A thorough examination of what I call my life must now ensue, for I must begin to look at all my assumptions, beliefs, values, and modes of being in this world. This process, undertaken with sincere purpose, will uncover and yield astounding information and insights about how I function and relate to other persons in my life. And as a student of A Course in Miracles, the context for this exploration will be what Jesus teaches us about projection, specialness, and relationships. At first, it may quietly dawn on me that I have used other persons in my life to fulfill my desires, and satisfy my needs and wishes. Is this harmful? Well, let us look at a few examples and try to determine what is underneath the pattern:

1) Let us say I have used others to get ahead in school, at work, or in any endeavor. I am really taking what I need from them in order to advance myself, and I do not really care about giving them anything in return, nor do I even care about their well being at all. Basically, then, my attitude is a very selfish one, filled with self-interest. But I conceal my true intentions behind an attitude of respect and friendliness. The end result is that I am being dishonest with others and myself about my true purpose in these relationships.

2) In romantic relationships, I perhaps can glean how I have used other people to satisfy my emotional and/or physical needs, not caring if I might have caused harm by lying about my true intentions so as to cover the secret intent of the relationship.

3) In my family relationships I may realize that in growing up I had a need to excel and be the best in everything so that my parents would shower their praise on me to the exclusion of my siblings. In other words, I had to use and manipulate all the situations that arose within my family as the means to extract love, approval, and praise from them, so that my star would shine the brightest among all the others in the family. I never really cared about my parents or my brothers or sisters for themselves; my concern was simply for what they could do for me so that I might achieve my goal of specialness.

Looking back on these three examples, it becomes abundantly clear that I have used relationships in my life to satisfy myself, with no consideration being given to the welfare of others. And this is indeed harmful! The thoughts and deeds listed above include omissions of love and commissions of selfishness, greed, and self-interest, all of which are encompassed by A Course in Miracles' term specialness. I realize that I have been very harmful to myself and others because my mode of being in the world came from scarcity and lack, the hallmark of the ego's wrong-minded thought system. Many realizations follow, such as:

a) If I believe I am a body, then the ego will always be my teacher because it teaches that we are all separate bodies that are incomplete, requiring something from the outside to complete us. This necessitates my taking from you what I need to fill my own perceived lack.

b) Harming others -- this comes from a misunderstanding of who I am, who you are, and what the purpose of life is. Relating as an ego will always cause harm, always be harmful, and result in harmfulness. That is a given. But since I have never taken the time to reflect on my thoughts, words, or deeds prior to this time, I was never aware that I could exist as a harmful being, unknown to myself, but perhaps not to others.

c) Using people for my needs is really an attack on them, which, A Course in Miracles teaches, only engenders guilt in myself and keeps me stuck in my wrong mind. My anger is always directed at you for your failure to meet my needs, and for not fulfilling the function I have given you in the dream I call my life. As Jesus states in the text, in a section called "Dream Roles":

In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to function unfulfilled as you perceive the function....When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the "reason" your attack is justified? (T-29.IV.3:1;4:1-2)

Finally, I see that this guilt-attack cycle has pervaded all my relationships, even though I was not aware of my unconscious dynamics. Furthermore, it now occurs to me that I have never allowed anyone to be intimate and close to me because of my strong need to defend myself. And what am I defending myself from? Obviously, I did not want people to use me as I had used them. And so I unconsciously erected an emotionally aloof pattern of relating to this world, so that no one could ever get close to me. This is what A Course in Miracles refers to as the attack-defense cycle:

Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days that bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of the imprisonment upon the mind (W-pI.153.3:2-3).

It is now clear to me that a great part of my life has been overshadowed by harm; not only because of my prior discoveries about myself and relationships in general, but also because in all my doings I constantly was judging everyone -- as if they were totally separate and distinct from me. So, through judgment, I made separation real, and indelibly imprinted it on my mind. Using rationalization of judgment as a sign of maturity and knowledge just kept the guilt in place. Why? Because projection makes perception (T-21.in.1:1). I take the guilt I believe is within me and place it on another, and then judge that person for it. A Eureka moment occurs -- I finally realize that I have used the written word for attack. Correspondence with others over the years, to use one example, has caused me much harm, let alone the others who were the objects of my projection and attack. Unconsciously, I have used the written word as an instrument of doing harm. There is almost a cascading effect of self-discovery as I begin to generalize from the specific harmful thoughts, words, and deeds I have become aware of, and now can see the more general pattern of projection and attack that has permeated all my relationships in life. As I press the pause button on my self-reflection, the thought surfaces: "What does it mean to do harm by omission?"

With pen in hand, I can begin to jot down probing questions about omissions in my life. Some of the thoughts are as follows:

1) Have I failed to accept responsibility in any of my relationships?

2) Have I also used my emotionally aloof pattern of relating as a means of being passive in all my relationships?

3) Have I chosen not to see what is before my very eyes, because I have made a prior decision not to let anyone else infringe upon my independence?

4) Have I made a prior decision to wall off part of the Sonship as having nothing to do with me under the guise of a justified xenophobia?

5) Another helpful recognition surfaces: one cannot have real relationships if they are based on need; and how difficult it is to set needs aside!

6) Last, but certainly not least, have I omitted kindness and caring from my repertoire of thoughts and behavior? Except, of course, when it would serve my specialness needs. This part of my self-examination will also have a ripple effect as the search continues to seek and find what is blocking me from fulfilling the principle: Do no harm to anyone.

In the manual for teachers, under gentleness -- the fourth characteristic of a teacher of God -- we interestingly enough do not read very much about being gentle, but do find stated there a great deal about harm and the need to set aside this primary thought in the ego's arsenal of specialness and hate. Indeed, the word harm (and its derivatives) appears nine times in the two-paragraph sub-section, while gentleness (and its derivatives) appears only three times. This is not surprising since the overriding emphasis in A Course in Miracles is on the undoing of the ego thought system as the pathway home to God, the Source of all Love. Taking a few lines from the opening paragraph, we can see this important emphasis on a teacher of God letting go of the thought system of harm:

Harm is the outcome of judgment. It is the dishonest act that follows a dishonest thought. It is a verdict of guilt upon a brother, and therefore on oneself. It is the end of peace and the denial of learning. It demonstrates the absence of God's curriculum, and its replacement by insanity (M-4.IV.1:3-7).

Thus, Jesus is explaining to us how our judgments of others are preceded by our judgment of ourselves. Following the dictates of the ego, we first believe that there is something inherently wrong with us, because we have produced and manifested a dream wherein the content states: "I have accomplished the separation from my Creator and Source." Then, horrified by the guilt over such wrongdoing, we seek to escape its pain by first denying that it is in ourselves, and second, projecting it out, making someone else guilty of what we have first accused ourselves of having done. Thus, the dishonest thought is our self-accusation, and the dishonest act is our accusation and judgment of another. And by placing a verdict of guilt upon our brother, we are merely reinforcing the guilt we first made real within ourselves. It inevitably leads to the end of peace and the denial of learning because we have called upon the ego to be our teacher, thereby blotting out God's curriculum, and replacing it with the insanity of wrong-minded thinking. To continue with the passage:

No teacher of God but must learn, -- and fairly early in his training, -- that harmfulness completely obliterates his function from his awareness. It will make him confused, fearful, angry and suspicious. It will make the Holy Spirit's lessons impossible to learn. Nor can God's Teacher be heard at all, except by those who realize that harm can actually achieve nothing (M-4.IV.1:8-11).

The first sentence in the above passage is very emphatic and all-encompassing in its application. It states unequivocally that a student of A Course in Miracles must learn fairly early in his training that harmfulness must be totally undone, otherwise he would never learn the Holy Spirit's lessons. In other words, notions of harmfulness as expressed in thought, word, or deed of any kind, will immediately cement us into the wrong mind, even though we may believe otherwise. It will block us from ever becoming aware of our intentions and motivations, both conscious and unconscious. And since we can see that inherent in the Course's process of undoing is to make the unconscious conscious -- in order to become aware of our ego so it can become undone for us by the Holy Spirit -- what we are doing by holding on to harmful and judgmental thoughts is effectively sabotaging our study and practice of A Course in Miracles. A final realization must be that harmful thoughts block out the Holy Spirit's Voice, thereby ensuring that we shall never awaken from the dream and return to our Source.

In conclusion, I can now understand what it means not to harm anyone, with no exceptions. To live one's life based on this principle means that in all circumstances, relationships, events, and situations, I must constantly monitor my thoughts and sensitize myself to discern when I have left my right mind -- home of the Holy Spirit -- and made a decision to switch to my wrong mind -- the domain of the ego. This is no small task, since most of us lead lives of habitual responses to ego programming as a natural way of relating. Having spent more time with the ego as our friend, it would seem unnatural for us to relate truly to Jesus or the Holy Spirit as our Teachers. And to let go of harm -- in any way, shape, or form -- can seem like an insurmountable task. But as a quick reminder, A Course in Miracles states that all we need is a little willingness to let go of our way and our perceptions, and ask for the Help of Harmlessness that is always there for us. And so let us recall Jesus' words on gentleness from the manual, reminding ourselves that it is his hand we wish to take, as together with him and all our brothers we walk the gentle way of Do no harm to anyone, paraphrasing workbook Lesson 195 as we go, Love is the way we walk in harmlessness.

Therefore, God's teachers are wholly gentle. They need the strength of gentleness, for it is in this that the function of salvation becomes easy. To those who would do harm, it is impossible. To those to whom harm has no meaning, it is merely natural. What choice but this has meaning to the sane? Who chooses hell when he perceives a way to Heaven? And who would choose the weakness that must come from harm in place of the unfailing, all-encompassing and limitless strength of gentleness? The might of God's teachers lies in their gentle-ness, for they have understood their evil thoughts came neither from God's Son nor his -Creator. Thus did they join their thoughts with Him Who is their Source. And so their will, which always was His Own, is free to be itself (M-4.IV.2).