They Don’t See Me: Marilyn Monroe, Projection, and the Practice of Seeing Clearly
What Marilyn Monroe Taught Me About Projection, Recognition, and Yoga
Reading time: 5 minutes
Recently, I found myself watching old interviews and documentaries about Marilyn Monroe. That may seem unsurprising given that, in my younger years, I wanted to be an actress. At seventeen, I moved from Australia to Los Angeles to study acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. I loved film. I loved storytelling. I was fascinated by the way actors could bring the complexity of human experience to life.
For a time, I pursued that path myself.
Yet what I found most difficult was not the work.
It was the rejection.
Every audition seemed to awaken wounds that were already there. The truth is, long before anyone else rejected me, I had become quite skilled at rejecting myself.
Like many people who grow up carrying unresolved pain, I spent years searching for validation, belonging, and a sense of worth outside myself.
Perhaps that is part of why Marilyn's story touched me so deeply.
Beneath the glamour and cultural mythology was Norma Jeane, a woman who grew up with instability, abandonment, and profound insecurity. Like many people shaped by difficult beginnings, she seemed to spend much of her life searching for something she could not quite find.
It did not seem to be fame she was searching for, nor attention.
It felt like something deeper.
A place to belong.
A place to rest.
A way home to herself.
As I listened to her interviews, I found myself less interested in the icon and more interested in the human being behind the image. Like many people, I had inherited the cultural image of Marilyn Monroe long before I knew much about Norma Jeane.
The blonde bombshell. The sex symbol. The fantasy.
But as I listened to her speak, I sensed something entirely different.
I heard intelligence, sensitivity, and self-awareness. I heard a woman who understood far more about what was happening around her than many people realised.
One particular quote stopped me in my tracks.
When asked about the way people perceived her, Marilyn responded:
"They don't see me. They see their own hidden thoughts and then they whitewash themselves by claiming that I embody them."
The moment I heard those words, I understood exactly what she meant.
Not because I am a celebrity.
Not because my life resembles hers.
But because projection is something many of us encounter in quieter ways throughout our lives.
People often believe projection only happens in romantic relationships. In reality, it happens everywhere—in families, friendships, workplaces, spiritual communities, and yoga rooms. And often, without realising it, they place those things onto another person. Carl Jung described projection as the process of attributing unconscious qualities within ourselves to someone else. We imagine another person possesses something that actually lives, at least in part, within us.
What struck me about Marilyn was not that she experienced projection. Many people do.
What struck me was that she understood it.
She knew people were responding to an image.
She knew they were interacting with an idea.
And she knew there was a difference between the image and the woman standing beneath it.
In yoga philosophy, we might say there is a difference between appearance and essence. Between the stories we construct and what is actually here.
Over the years, I have witnessed this dynamic in my own work as a teacher.
Students sometimes tell me they experience calm in my presence. Or steadiness. Or peace. While I deeply appreciate those reflections, the truth is more ordinary and more human.
I am not peace.
I practice returning to peace.
I am not steadiness.
I practice returning to steadiness.
I am not some perfected version of awareness.
I am simply someone who has spent many years learning how to come back when I drift away.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder if what I was searching for through acting was not so different from what I eventually found through teaching.
More than performance, I longed for connection.
More than being seen, I longed to meet others authentically.
The deeper connection I developed with myself through yoga became the foundation for the connection I could experience with my students.
What I was seeking was never really applause.
It was relationship.
Yet it is easy for students, teachers, authors, leaders, and public figures of every kind to become screens upon which others project.
Someone sees confidence and assumes certainty.
Someone sees compassion and assumes a life free from struggle.
Someone sees wisdom and assumes a person who has arrived.
But yoga continually invites us beyond appearances.
It asks us to look again.
To become curious.
To see clearly.
The deeper invitation is not to find someone who embodies everything we long for.
The deeper invitation is to recognise those qualities within ourselves.
At this point, some readers may be wondering: What is so wrong with projection?
The truth is, projection itself is not wrong.
It is part of being human.
We all see the world through the lens of our experiences, wounds, hopes, fears, and desires. In many ways, projection is simply the mind trying to make sense of what it encounters.
The invitation is not to eliminate projection altogether. That would be impossible.
The invitation is to become aware of when it is happening.
A student may walk into a yoga class and experience a sense of calm in the presence of a teacher. They may think, "She is so peaceful."
There may be truth in that observation.
But if the story ends there, something important can be missed.
The student may begin to believe that the teacher possesses something they do not.
The teacher is elevated.
The student is diminished.
Separation is created.
Yet what if the peace they are sensing is also awakening something within themselves?
What if the teacher is not demonstrating perfection, but possibility?
The same can be true of anyone we admire—an author, a friend, a partner, or a public figure.
The qualities that move us most deeply are often pointing toward something alive within us, waiting to be recognised and cultivated.
Projection becomes problematic only when we mistake it for the whole truth. When we stop seeing the human being in front of us and begin relating only to the image we have created.
Awareness allows us to hold both.
To appreciate what we see in another person while remaining curious about what those perceptions may reveal about ourselves.
In this way, projection can become a doorway rather than an obstacle.
A doorway to greater self-understanding.
A doorway to humility.
A doorway to genuine connection.
This is where projection begins to transform into recognition.
Projection says:
"You have something I do not."
Recognition says:
"You remind me of something I am capable of becoming."
One creates separation.
The other creates connection.
One places another person on a pedestal.
The other allows us to stand beside them.
For many years, I assumed applause was about the person receiving it.
As a young actress, I understood the longing to be seen.
Like many people carrying old wounds, there was a part of me that believed approval might finally provide the love, belonging, or validation I had not fully found within myself.
I understand that longing with great compassion now.
The little girl in me wanted to know she mattered.
She wanted to know she was enough.
Alongside my interest in acting, yoga had already begun to enter my life. In 1999, I completed my first teacher training, and over the years I found myself increasingly drawn to the depth of connection that teaching offered.
Years into teaching, I began to notice something unexpected.
Occasionally, at the end of class, students would begin to clap.
At first, I felt uncomfortable. Part of me wanted to stop them. Part of me thought, "This isn't yoga."
But over time, something shifted.
I began to wonder if the applause was not really about me at all.
What if they were responding to something they had experienced within themselves?
What if the peace, connection, insight, or presence they touched during practice was being reflected back through the relationship we had created together?
Perhaps the applause was simply their way of giving something back to the part of themselves that had come alive during those moments.
In those moments, I see myself in my students, and perhaps they see themselves in me.
Not because either of us is complete.
Not because either of us has arrived.
But because something true has been shared.
These days, I simply allow the applause when it comes.
Not because I need it.
And not because I reject it.
Sometimes healing happens when we allow things to be exactly as they are.
Sometimes what appears on the surface to be appreciation for another person is actually gratitude for the part of ourselves that is finally beginning to awaken.
Perhaps this is why Marilyn's words continue to stay with me.
Beneath the glamour and fame was a woman longing to be seen.
Not as a symbol.
Not as a fantasy.
Not as an idea.
But as herself.
And if we are honest, isn't that what most of us want?
To be met beneath the roles.
Beneath the accomplishments.
Beneath the identities.
To be seen not as a projection, but as a person.
Yoga, at its heart, is a practice of seeing clearly.
Not merely seeing others clearly.
But seeing ourselves clearly.
Gently setting down the stories.
Softening the projections.
Returning again and again to what is actually here.
And perhaps, in doing so, we create the possibility for something rare and beautiful.
Not admiration.
Not idealisation.
But genuine recognition.
The kind that quietly says:
"I see you."
And maybe even more importantly:
"I am beginning to see myself."
Mellara Gold
Mellara Gold is an embodied practice teacher and writer rooted in yoga, mindfulness, and contemplative traditions.
