Do u need other to be present next to u in order to see their memories? So u never saw yrself in the mind movie?? Have u seen your face?
Oh, I missed a couple of your questions. I don't need to be next to someone, just "connected" to them somehow. Sometimes I can't do it with people I technically know very well (like family in this life) and sometimes I can do it with strangers that I technically don't know in this life. So it's based on connections beyond this life only. I don't think I've ever "seen" my face, since my past personas didn't seem to focus on looking at their reflections much. I knew things about myself, just because it was my body, though.
I'd rather prefer to know whether it's my memories or other spirits, coz by having their memories is like carrying a new neg karmic baggage to the next life e.g. Being a murder or being murdered, having thought u have murdered, it's enough for u to share some of the karmic load. If nice ones it's okay, but when u started grasping that it was your life, u started having nostalgia to be in that scene or country that u fond of, where some ppl do that, this one is still okay, coz by keep thinking that place, maximum yr next reincarnation will be directed to the country that u always daydream.
I think this is only a risk if you haven't learned to accept the lesson and let the past be the past. One of the things I had to learn in this life was letting people have their own lives and not anchoring myself (or attempting to bind them) with promises or saving them from themselves. When it's something we need to work on we're given opportunities to work through it, along with the difficulties that come with the process.
How I experience "karma" (for lack of a better word) doesn't match what you seem to believe. Karma is like walking across a street without looking and getting hit by a car. Lack of caution doesn't always end in tragedy, but when it does you have the long term process of healing broken bones and possibly learning to walk again. Unlike the physical body, though, when we suffer in a life/lives and recover we end up stronger and more able/aware/complete afterward.
So if we "pick up" someone's karma (basically accept their experience as an opportunity to learn) and truly accept and integrate what we can learn from it, we actually don't have to experience it first hand because we've gained the strength/insight/etc that allows us to avoid the root of problem in the future. Yes, some people get stuck, but they would get stuck on their own problems at some point anyway. It can't be avoided, because life brings those experiences our way whether we've figured out how to handle them or not. People who get stuck are in a place where getting stuck is how they handle it, until they sort themselves out and learn to incorporate the growth within the experiences.
I do this all the time. The problems I get hung up on are things I'm learning from, working through, and becoming capable of dealing with. It may be no fun in the middle, and I might spend years longing for it to be over or wishing someone would just rescue me... but at the end I have a new skill or insight. Even if the same problem comes up again I can move through it on a completely different level than before, and it simply can't anchor on the same places in me because those blind/lacking spots have been smoothed out or eliminated. Everything is an opportunity for growth.
There are different areas for this process, and we make progress at different speeds in each one, possibly depending on what we've decided to process most actively in a current stage of life. For example, I'm strongly connected to several individuals and would love to live closer to them instead of scattered around the world as we are now. My attraction to places is mostly because that's where they live now, and also where we shared lives back then. I'd soon lose most of my interest in the location if they moved.
However, like you, I wouldn't give up the opportunity to experience incarnate lives at the same time as them just yet. Even if I could "move on" right now I wouldn't want to move on without them. I don't think that's a negative quality, whatever Buddhism thinks.