CHAPTER ONE;
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Projecting Your Gold
My first analyst, Fritz Kunkel, said that
there are three ways to learn psychol-
ogy: “Read Greek mythology, read Jung, and watch.
Watching is best.” I learn so much from watching,
and one of the things I observe most carefully is the
exchange of inner, alchemical gold. Inner gold is the
highest value in the human psyche. It is our soul, the
Self, the innermost part of our being. It is us at our
best, our twenty-four-karat gift to ourselves. Every-
one has inner gold. It isn’t created, but it does have
to be discovered. When I speak about gold this way,
I am also speaking about God. These are two ways
to describe the mystery.
When we awaken to a new possibility in our lives,
we often see it first in another person. A part of us
that has been hidden is about to emerge, but it doesn’t
go in a straight line from our unconscious to becom-
ing conscious. It travels by way of an intermediary, a
host. We project our gold onto someone, and sud-
denly we’re consumed with that person. The first ink-
ling of this is when the other person appears to be so
luminous that he (or she) glows in the dark. That’s a
sure sign that something is changing in us and we are
projecting our gold onto the other person.
When we observe the things we attribute to the
other person, we see our own depth and meaning.
Our gold goes first from us to them. Eventually it will
come back to us. Projecting our inner gold offers us
the best chance for an advance in consciousness.
The Medieval Mind
In the Middle Ages, the work of alchemy was to pro-
duce gold from base metals. There were charlatans
trying to make actual gold, but the best alchemists
were those working with the gold of the spirit.
Alchemy comes from a time when the medieval
mind was at its highest flowering. In medieval times,
people did not divide reality into inner and outer or
even acknowledge a difference between the two. For
them, inside and outside were the same. To accom-
plish all that we have today, we’ve had to split the
world in two. We couldn’t be this competitive with a
medieval mind. But the price we pay for our accom-
plishments is loneliness and an inability to love.
When we’re in love, we are our beloved. I spent
many years trying to help people differentiate be-
tween inner and outer: You are you, and I am I.
Your husband is your husband. We still have not yet
completed the transition to the modern mind. Many
psychological problems are a failure to differentiate
between out there and in here.
According to the teachings of India, the external
world is maya, illusion. It is considered illusory be-
cause it is actually within, not out there. We see only
the “ten thousand things” that we project. In ancient
China, Lao Tzu dreamed of a butterfly, and for the
rest of his life he didn’t know whether he had dreamed
the butterfly or the butterfly had dreamed him.
In the West, gold is the symbol of the Self, while
in the East, the symbol of our inner divinity is the
diamond. In their interior meanings, they are the
same, but the images are different. Diamonds are
the hardest matter on earth—unearthly, celestial,
and impersonal. Gold is much softer, a matter of
relationship, the Self as related. I think we’re lucky
to have gold to cope with.
The Glow in Your Eyes
When we see that we have given our spiritual gold to
someone to hold for us, there are several ways we
might respond. We could go to him or her and say,
“The meaning of my life has suddenly appeared in the
glow in your eyes. May I tell you about it?” This is
another way of saying, “I have given you my inner
gold. Will you carry it for me for a while?” But we
rarely see and do things that directly. Instead, we
stand across the room, turn our back on him, and feel
totally frightened, stumbling and carrying on in odd
ways. We meet at the coffee pot during the morning
break at work and banter with each other, speaking all
kinds of nonsense. We joke and laugh, and an animat-
ed play goes on. Then, when we head back to work,
we feel energized and brightened for the day. It was
not the coffee. It was the exchange of inner, alchem-
ical gold.
The exchange of gold is a mysterious process. It is
our gold, but it’s too heavy for us, so we need some-
one else to carry it for a time. That person becomes
synonymous with meaning. We follow him with an
eagle eye wherever he goes. His smile can raise us to
heavenly heights, his frown will hurl us to hellish
depths, so great is the power of meaning.
Hero Worship
Sometimes the exchange of gold takes the form of
hero worship. For a ten-year-old boy, his twelve-
year-old neighbor is a hero. The ten-year-old wants
to imitate him. He walks like him. He wears shoes
just like his. He borrows his vocabulary and hangs
around him as much as he can. We all know the
power of fashion, and especially how fashion runs
through a neighborhood of adolescents. The style of
shoes, prisoner pants, all those things you’ve got to
have. It’s both inspiring and funny to watch some-
body hero-worship.
Two years later, when the ten-year-old is twelve,
he has become the characteristics that he projected
onto the twelve-year-old. He assimilated them back
and became them. Now he hero-worships a fourteen-
year-old and has a new ladder to climb.
I remember vividly my own early hero worship-
ping. It was so strong. Slowly and painfully, I’ve
drawn those hero-worship projections—this placing
of my own potential onto others—back to myself.
Turning gray in the process, I have become what I
was hero-worshipping.
Hunting for Gold
When I was fourteen, I drove with my grandmother
to Spokane, Washington, to attend a family funeral.
One of my cousins, a little older than I, had married,
and I saw her husband for the first time. Instantly,
he became my hero. I was unstable in that period of
my life. My feet didn’t work well, and I hadn’t really
entered the masculine world—I’m not greatly en-
dowed in that direction.
His name was Thor. He was of Norwegian ances-
try, in his early twenties, a big, strong guy, an ab-
solute master of the physical world. That fellow did
something so kind and important for me. The day
after the funeral, he plucked me out of the family
gathering and took me into the woods to go hunt-
ing, the first and last hunting I’ve ever done. He
sensed who I was, what I needed, and at what speed
to initiate me. He knew I had to be told which end
of the gun to point where, and he did it all so well.
He was a God-Man, someone of infinitely high value
for me. I was envious and bound to him, almost lit-
erally. I placed my feet in his footsteps as we walked
through the forest, giddy with his greatness.
Suddenly he stopped and said, “Squirrel on a
limb. Over there.” Ten or twenty yards away was a
squirrel on a pine branch. “All right,” he said, and
told me exactly what to do: “Line this up with the
squirrel. Pull the trigger gently, so you don’t jiggle
the gun and lose him out of sight. It’ll go bang in
your ear. Don’t be afraid.” I did it, and of course I
thought I’d missed the squirrel. “Come on,” he said,
and we went over. And lo and behold, I hadn’t
missed. There on the ground under the limb was a
ragged, bloody mess of a squirrel. I was so proud and
so horrified at the same time. I learned in a split sec-
ond what heroism costs you and what it gives you. I
had become a big man, but I couldn’t stand it. I did
not want to shoot squirrels. We went back home, and
I was more pleased than unhappy.
Giving Back
Forty years later, I got a letter from my cousin, Thor’s
wife: “You must be Bob. My granddaughter brought
a book home from her psychology class by Robert
Johnson, and I think it must be you.” I hadn’t seen
or heard from her in more than forty years. We spoke
on the phone, and she asked if she could visit for her
sixtieth birthday.
What a wonderful time we had! She brought a
small entourage of people, among whom was a young
Thor, the grandson of my hero. He was the same age
I had been when I knew the first Thor. And he was
skinny and frightened, the way I’d been, quickly go-
ing down in the whirlpool of the modern world. My
head was swimming with possibilities. So I enter-
tained young Thor with the story of my first and only
hunting trip, talking about his grandfather and the
wonderful day he had given me. Unfortunately, the
elder Thor had drunk himself to death and was pretty
much a failure in his life. My cousin had divorced
him, and he just went down skid row. I didn’t like
hearing this. He had been my hero.
So I told this little guy, who hadn’t said a word,
“I owe your grandfather an immense debt, and I
transfer that debt to you. I owe you whatever you
need from me.” The boy latched on to me immedi-
ately, and I became his hero. It was a beautiful
exchange.
This is alchemical gold. You put your own gold
onto somebody until you’re able to hold it your-
self. As a fourteen-year-old, I couldn’t do what Thor
could. He was twenty-four or twenty-five, and I put
my gold onto him, the gold of masculinity, strength,
courage, and independence, things I had none of and
he had lots.
