Get Your Inner Gold Back From Jesus

Photo of Dr. Simmons at a waterfall — Photo of Dr. Simmons near Multnomah Falls in Oregon

We Must Project to Grow

“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 become conscious. It travels by way of an intermediary […] We Project our gold onto someone […]. Our Gold goes from us to them. Eventually it will come back to us. Projecting our inner gold offer us the best chance to advance in consciousness.” – Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection.

We project psychological gold in all relationships: in romance, in therapy, in politics—and perhaps most profoundly, in our spirituality. Projection is not the problem. It’s an involuntary, unconscious, and necessary stage of development. The problem arises when our inner gold never comes home.

There’s a moment in each saga of our spiritual journey when we must take back our projection. Or as Johnson puts it, we must ask for our inner gold back. This is the sacred turning point—when we begin to embody what we once admired from afar. Until that exchange happens, our inner gold remains externalized, idolized, and limits our potential.

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Jesus as the Gold Carrier

In the Common Christian Myth, Jesus carries all the gold. Not just as teacher or model, but as the exclusive embodiment of goodness, godliness, and power. This has created a psychological problem: the more we idolize Jesus, the harder it becomes to embody the divine in ourselves.

Jesus never said, “Worship me.” He said, “Follow me.” He called others into their own radical path of transformation. “Take up your cross,” he said—don’t just show gratitude for mine. “The kingdom of God is within you,” yet we are wired to look for it in some external incarnation.

Jesus words are invitations to empower and activate a life of wholeness, but the Common Christian Myth coopted them as static practices meant for perpetual repetition. To embrace our transforming inner gold, we must reclaim our golden projections from Jesus (or whoever holds our golden image). Any gratitude for Jesus should not be for an abstract belief he saved us, but in his demonstration of how we can save ourselves.

The Trap of Idolization

To idolize someone is to place them on a pedestal so high they become unreachable—and we become fulfilled, only when they are in reach. When we elevate another as the sole bearer of wisdom, love, or spiritual power, we unconsciously exile our own access to those qualities in ourselves.

We see this split everywhere in Christian culture: Jesus is good, I am a sinner. He is divine, I am only human. Jesus is worthy, I am broken. He is the savior, I am lost and in needing to be saved.

Yes, when we feel and believe at a core level that we are lost, we may look outward for a savior. But we have to ask for that gold back. If not, we will stay in a perpetual state of need, fear, anxiety, overwhelm, always searching the horizon for rescue. The divine presence will never evolve beyond your psycho-spiritual and emotional first responder. I am convinced this is why so many devout Evangelicals simultaneously speak of their closeness to God, while radiating a palpable frantic, hypervigilance, anxious attachment to themselves and all their relationships.

The Church as Multi-level Marketing Organization

Many churches absorbed in the Common Christian Myth function like multi-level marketing schemes of projected inner gold. My client Ingrid brought this to my attention.

Pastors are mentored and trained to project their gold onto their former pastor, seminary professor, Jesus, Paul, etc.. They got to their position by “emptying” and idolizing other leaders and spiritual figure who came before them. But because they never reclaimed their own inner divinity, they now depend on the adoration, loyalty, and energy of their congregation to maintain the illusion of authority. It’s a system of gold-extraction masked as discipleship.

And so the pattern continues: followers are told to go out and “make disciples”—not empowered peers, but more followers. The unspoken message is: find people who will now project onto you, so the cycle continues.

This is not the way of Jesus. It’s a spiritual pyramid scheme. All the gold goes to the top owner, and everyone else is simply trying to cover the debt they accrued when they bought in. It is quite literally robbing Peter (yourself/your followers) because you over-invested in Paul.

Jesus as Mirror, Not Idol

If Jesus remains only an object of worship, then the cross becomes an artifact of what he did instead of a symbol to enter into our own death and resurrection. To put it in evocative terms, worship is idolatry. And again idolatry is necessary for a time. But we must claim back the dynamic energy we invested in that idol-ized image.

Jesus was always trying to return the gold to those who followed him. Over and over again, he flipped the narrative—from dependency to empowerment, from passivity to presence:

“You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:14)
→ Not I am the light—you are. Don’t hide it. Shine.
“The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
→ Not out there, not in me alone. It’s in you.
“You will do even greater works than these.” (John 14:12)
→ Not only will you match what I’ve done—you’ll surpass it.
“Take up your cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
→ Not just witness my sacrifice. Own your own.
“Go in peace. Your faith has made you well.” (Luke 8:48)
→ I didn’t heal you. You did. I just held your energy until you could hold it yourself.
“You are gods.” (John 10:34)
→ Don’t call it blasphemy—this has always been the truth.
“Let your light shine before others…” (Matthew 5:16)
→ Stop hiding. You already have what you’re seeking.
“Daughter, your faith has healed you.” (Mark 5:34)
→ Don’t give me the credit. It was always in you.

These moments are gold exchanges—where the divine is no longer held hostage in a single figure but is handed back to us–those who willingly or unwillingly gave up their divine agency.

From Dis-illusionment to Embodiment

We are living in a time of necessary dis-illusionment. Disillusionment is not betrayal—it is initiation into our golden shadow. It is the sacred moment when you embody your gold, and no longer invest it in someone else.

When you stop searching for the divine outside yourself, you begin to remember what was never missing. The gold you once projected onto Jesus, a pastor, or a movement is not just waiting to be reclaimed—it’s waiting to be incarnated. Not so you can inflate your ego, but so you can reanimate your soul.