In order to clear out my old beliefs, I needed to look inside and find what they were. We all hold various beliefs, even beliefs that don't work for us, and which came into being without us ever choosing them. Many appear when we're young, coming through family, teachers, friends, or anyone we see as having authority, who make us feel that what they think or feel is the right way to see things. As a young person, this can easily create the belief that they must be right, even when we know, on some level, they may not be. Not being able to deal with our own sense of knowing, quickly stops us feeling that we can, as we can't continue to do so in a way that doesn't allow it to be expressed. Soon, there's no longer any other perspective but their way of seeing things, and everything is now flitered through this belief. Those people don't realise they're doing this when they do this, as what they're telling us tends to come from love for the most part, even if it ends up twisted along the way by what was often given to them in the first place. But in making us believe something outside our own innate sense of truth, they limit us. For in accepting their way of seeing things as being true, it creates a belief that stands in front of whatever we'd otherwise really think or feel. Always influencing, always colouring, whatever we experience. Changing us, affecting us, holding us back, and it is a belief that is not ours. We didn't come to it through our own life experience, we had it imposed on us through the misunderstanding of someone else's. In having to deal with beliefs that were not my own, I came to accept something I wasn't supposed to - that there's nothing to be gained from believing something I feel to be true even though others don't see it that way. We all change our beliefs as we grow, depending on what we think represents whatever seems to be the clearest thing that matters at the time. Having a belief about anything makes it have a say in what we do. It is the filter we pass things through before it goes out into the world, or before we let something in. So if it feels real, as all beliefs do by definition, and therefore colours what we see and experience, until it no longer does, no matter how hard we try and understand something, we will never see beyond it, for it is at the edge of our box, and we are always within it. If there was a way to step outside our current box and get a glimpse of things we don't normally see, we might be able to change this. Some people can do this when they use certain plants or engage in certain physical activities even. Going outside ourselves this way is something I've experienced. And, through intentional reflection, come to recognise the beliefs I have while looking from the level they reside in. With practise, as if looking through the eyes of an objective director, rather than the original actor, I see how they affected me, and can examine them for what they are. In this way, defunct beliefs are clearly felt because they're obviously out of alignment with who I actually am. Beliefs that don't work can be let go of once I can see them, but the ones that seem to replace them, the ones that appear in their place, are not always easy to deal with. Many of the old beliefs were also keeping these beliefs away. But, once I can consider even these without feeling like I must accept them, fear them, run away from them, etc. I can allow them to be, in a way the skeptics would understand, and simply consider whether they mean something to me or not. If they do, and as long as they do, they stay. But should they ever no longer feel that way, they're let go of, completely. They were only ever an opportunity, a step in a certain direction. The universe operates a certain way. What we put out is what we get back. The world is simply a projection, a play, a focus of attention, while we have the experiences we have in it. The world isn't real as such, only our experience of it is. The important experiences, the ones that make us see ourselves, change things, happen at different points, always unexpectedly. They are our opportunities to literally change our frequency; transition into a new reality so to speak, and only come, and are only seen, when we're ready to do so. And if we've been working on letting go of old beliefs, we not only see them for what they are when they appear, but are able to step in to them smoothly, without those old ones getting in the way.