Once someone figures out it’s a good idea to do some shadow work, the first question is always, where do I start? The best place to begin is with what annoys you the most about yourself. Again, I’m not talking about how you have a cowlick at the front of your hairline. I’m talking about a tendency to do or say something that you can’t help but can’t stand about yourself, such as being judgmental and petty.

We need to uncover our beliefs. You can use various techniques and modalities to do it. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is the one I use as I’m impatient, and it’s a fast way to do it. Use whatever works for you. Once you uncover a belief you want to replace, such as swapping out being judgmental for being more discerning and accepting, the next step is determining where it came from.

Here’s where it gets interesting. It could be a belief you formed based on your experiences, a belief carried forward from a past life, or handed down from your ancestors. There might be other possibilities, such as you’re being driven by an entity attached to you or it’s from an alien energy implant, but these two we won’t be discussing here. They are a whole ‘nother level of special. The three possibilities we have are more than enough to keep us busy. Let’s take them one at a time.

Your own belief. This is a belief you formed based on personal experiences, knowledge, or assumptions. It’s important to recognize that we function based on what we believe. Those beliefs could be unfounded and false, but we run on them nonetheless. That’s why it’s important to look at beliefs from time to time and decide if they are still true for us and whether or not they are consistent with the highest and best energy we’re creating in our lives.

Again, use whatever method you choose to find the belief and decide what you want to replace it with. People often forget this part. Think of the belief as a flat tire. It’s not going to get you anywhere, so it has to be removed. If you want to get somewhere, you have to replace the tire with a new one to keep you moving forward. Once you find a belief, write it down, and we’ll come back to what to do with it.

Past life. Most of us have had past lives. Some of us have had many. We were daring souls who chose the lives we live when we take corporeal form. We are so daring that often those lives were challenging, perhaps even traumatic. It was all our doing, but intense experiences leave a mark on us that we often carry into our next incarnation. It could be something as simple as being afraid of dogs for no reason or something more complicated such as money is evil.

Ancestors. Then there are the beliefs passed down through our biological lines. I’m not talking about stuff that your mom used to say, like “don’t run with scissors.” I’m talking about beliefs such as “people of color are fill-in-the-blank.” You might have gotten it from one of your grandfathers several generations back. That doesn’t mean you act on those beliefs or accept them as right or true. It means that a belief like that, even today, can influence what you think, what you say, and how you act.

Beliefs have a way of asserting themselves in ways we don’t expect. Think about the time you did or said something that left you feeling embarrassed, appalled, and bewildered about why it happened. That is an example of a time when a belief you never knew you had surfaced.

Take your time digging for beliefs. Look for competing beliefs such as “I’m smart” and “I’m stupid.”

Logic dictates that the opposite phrases would cancel one another out, but they don’t. The reason is that they activate under different circumstances, making it possible for you to have both “running” at the same time. It’s your situation that brings them into play.

Now that you know the common points of origination for beliefs, what do you do about it?

You figure out where yours are and take them out at the source. No, it’s not as easy as it sounds. This is one of the reasons a lot of people don’t like to do shadow work. It’s the word WORK that makes them take off running. Here are some things to think about and some tips to make it easier.

If the belief is yours, you can use whatever technique you like to replace it. If you want to check it before you start, first discover where in your body that belief resonates. Yes, a belief is a mental construct, but it also resonates with a part of your body. Think of something you don’t like, such as doing something you hate. The chances are, you will also feel a physical reaction to it, like your stomach clenches or you grit your teeth. When you think of the belief, your body will react to it. After you have removed that belief and replaced it, that resonance in your body will also be removed. When you think about the old belief again, there should be no reaction in your body at all. If there is, that means there is a similar belief still there, and you will have to be creative and/or selective with your word order to find it and remove it.

If the belief is one from your past life, you can use muscle testing to speak with your former self. You can also use a pendulum if you have one. This is where it can be tricky. Sometimes, you can speak with your past self and tell them that this belief that served them in their lifetime doesn’t serve you well in this one, and it needs to go. Ask them if they would be willing to release it since they are no longer living and you are the current incarnation. Most past lives are willing to let go of whatever it is in the interest of allowing your shared soul to learn the lesson it was meant to learn about in the previous lifetime and then move on. If they are unwilling to let go of it, you can close the energy connection between you without jeopardizing anything. The belief is part of that energy connection. If you shut it down, like closing a door, the belief will no longer affect you.

Most people have connections to past lives and don’t know it because they only show up in certain circumstances, if at all, but strongly held beliefs in the past that have been brought forward by the soul can hold you back in this lifetime. It’s not to your benefit to continue to carry it.

If you need to cut the energy cord between yourself and your former self, again, there are various techniques you can use. Here are a couple of suggestions to do this.

1. Visualize an energy cord. It can look like a fiber optic wire if that helps. It runs between you and the former you. See yourself holding a knife or a pair of scissors and cutting the cord. The half attached to your past self spins away and flies back into the past. The half attached to you shrivels and drops off like a dead leaf from a tree, with its energy absorbed into the earth.

2. Visualize yourself standing at an open doorway. Your past self is on the other side. Slam and lock the door between you with the conviction that it will never open again.

Either of these works. It depends on your preference and what resonates with you. The second one, while consisting of fewer steps, is actually harder because it requires you to have rock-solid intention that the door won’t open again. Unless you can make it stick, the door will open again, and you will have to deal with the belief again. If you have any doubt concerning it, try the first method and see how you feel.

On to the ancestors. This one can be the most difficult. This requires you to speak to the ancestor holding this belief. Your ancestor has not completed the journey their soul agreed to, and now they are stuck in the middle holding on to old habits, beliefs, grudges, resentments, sorrow, etc. Your job is to get them to cross over into the light. In doing so, they drop everything they have been carrying. When they do, that energy is transmuted into healing energy for the rest of the family.

When beliefs are from the ancestors, it’s not only you that carry it but the entire family line from them forward. When they pass through, and healing energy is created, it must be brought forward in time to the current day to remove the belief from anyone in the family who carry it, including you.

How the heck do you do all that?

Again, various methods. You could use muscle testing to speak to them or a pendulum. You could also use meditation to visit with them, or if you know a shaman, you could journey to see them. The point is to get them to pass through the doorway of light. Once you tell them that they are causing you to suffer because they are refusing to move on, most ancestors will do so. They want a better life for those who come after them and would not purposely do anything to harm their kin. A few are too fearful of what comes next or stubborn or uncaring that they refuse to go no matter what you tell them. Those are the tough cases; in those instances, you will probably need the help of a shaman or someone who works with ancestors to get them to move on.

This is the bulk of the work you’re going to do as far as belief work is concerned, but there is more. Unfortunately, shadow work is not a one-and-done thing. It’s multi-faceted. Belief work is important and helps you become the person you most want to be. It can also help jump-start your ability to manifest what you want in life.

Start digging for those beliefs and replacing them with something better. Stick around for the next post when I talk about another aspect of shadow work, the shadow self.