It is just that I have issues with the "earth is a school" narrative. If that was the case, why the memory wipe/block? As far as we know, learning is predicated on memory. The memory wipe plus the negative influences of genetics and culture would result in people making the same mistakes in different lifetimes and acquiring more "negative karma" to deal with. According to Michael Newton, people can take several life times to overcome certain negative traits[1] and I suspect this wouldn't be the case if people could keep all or part of their memory.
The memory wipe is not really complete. Actually, that’s what people often talk about here on the forum. Skills from previous lives may carry over subconsciously and things you’ve learnt once may come to you easier next time. This can be trivial things like learning a foreign language or a musical instrument easier. But this also goes for the more important “lessons of life”. Once you’ve learnt to be compassionate this will be a characteristic of your soul and it will come through more or less in future lives. You won’t have to learn it over and over again from zero. But there will be also other factors that play into it like genetics, upbringing and life circumstances that will make it more or less difficult for you to live now what you have learnt before. The downside is that also negative things like phobias, dislikes and traumas can carry over to future lives. One advantage of the memory wipe is to protect your current life persona from such negative impacts. Another is that remembering all your past lives and life-between-lives with its different dimensions would be just too much to handle for a human being. The human brain is probably not even able to comprehend and process all of it.
In addition to that, some people make the same mistakes in current life over and over again when they pretty well remember everything they did. IMO, remembering is no guarantee for learning faster. Some people, and maybe some souls also, are stuck in behavioral patterns which they can’t easily overcome. And I guess, this is true for all of us to some degree.
Regarding Michael Newton, I’m familiar with his books. They were among the first ones I read on the topic. I also got a regression done by a therapist trained in his method. When I first read the books, I found it all fascinating and I appreciate Newton's work, but later I grew more and more uncomfortable with the idea of afterlife being like a literal school where you would have classrooms and classes, where you would study and discuss things with always the same group of people/souls.
But listening to many accounts later on, I don’t think I ever heard anyone with an NDE or astral travel experience or pre-birth memory describe a school type setting in afterlife like in the Michael Newton books, or talk much about soul groups.
The “all Earth is a school” or “the purpose of life is to learn lessons” is often repeated by many, though. But that’s just one analogy you can use and one which human beings will easily understand. Instead, I see more and more people and myself come up with other analogies like the video game analogy or the rollercoaster/fun park analogy (obviously modern ways to describe things).
I don’t like the term “learning lessons” much, either. I see reincarnation as an opportunity to gain all kinds of different experiences, which will eventually help a soul to evolve, to get refined, to get a greater understanding of Creation, God and itself, to become wiser, happier, more loving and more beautiful. But I guess, it just comes down to everyone’s current perception and understanding how to describe it.
As I understand it, while as humans on Earth we don’t ever have the full picture of everything, of our current life, past lives, the spiritual world and reincarnation even if we remember or experience parts of it, but especially not if we are much influenced by our fears and human ego.
But also as souls in life-between-lives we don’t necessarily see and understand everything. Our knowledge and understanding depends on the level of consciousness of each individual soul or the dimension it is in at that moment. It seems some souls don’t consciously ascend to the higher dimensions between lives where they would get a greater awareness and understanding of themselves and all the benefits and consequences of their lives and reincarnation journeys. These souls in especial need spirit guides to help them to move on. While some maybe go to the higher dimensions consciously, but just don’t remember it at all. That’s why the accounts of people with NDEs and the like are also not the full picture of everything. Some are more, some are less, depending on their level of understanding and consciousness . And there are as many individual experiences in the spiritual world as there are souls. I wouldn’t rely on just one source of information like Michael Newton.
