Greetings,

Spiritually involved conversations often get to the difficulties of knowing how much of a 'person' is retained in the Afterlife or while OBing--as a ghost, a subtle body sheath, an aspect of the total self, etc.  I find these variations confusing and now I may add to it    with the retrieval I was assigned last night.

After asking Guidance for a retrieval I immediately started rising total-body style from my physical body, then something changed and I settled back down, (leaving the hair on my arms standing up as though in fear but no fear felt), and then trailed out through the top of my head, then a sense of forward movement for awhile. Then an irritation over my ribcage where a problem 'vine'/nadis seems to be, that I thought might interrupt the whole process but no, ok.  Guidance said, 'There he is. Speak to him.'

At first I couldn't see anyone but as we spoke I sensed a dusty colored man with a shovel, wearing a light colored robe or long coat. His hair and beard were tangled, grey, partially from the dust. He said he'd been there since 1916. I asked why was he there and he said it was something he thought he should do. I asked if he didn't think it was time to move on and he thought about that. He answered all my questions directly and calmly and seemed in control of his situation. When I heard his name I considered being afraid but he was calm so I looked for Helpers and saw they were in uniforms (rather fancy ones) so I figured they were ready. He excused himself and went to talk to one.

Before I realized it I felt a slight upward magnetic pull and looked over at them. The guard was standing back and the retrievee was heading upward by himself in a sort of comic-book superman pose, just being raised up without swooshing his cape or anything. "Is that it?" I asked and Guidance said" Yes, you can go now."
When I got home that spot on my lower ribs was acting up, feeling like a wire spring in it was being straightened. Guidance told me not to touch it.

I do not think I retrieved the total person. It felt like a minor act. This fellow had a major role in history so that he would carry much more energy into the AL, I assume. Also since his life was historically recorded, I've heard his final hours were extremely dramatic, and this fellow had gotten past that and was very self-contained. His major self must have already gone into the AL, IMO.
 
So I now think that we retain memories of people who have hurt us, (even in a previous life) and so it was a self-retrieval in a way, but also some bit of him was freed and could then be reunited with himself or his Disk family. This arrangement has probably been recorded before but now it makes more sense to me.
Thanks for listening.

Bets

hi Bets, heres a story to lay on you I wish I had more info. working on it as you bring up an interesting question. perhaps its easier to see these as soul "fragments" or aspects of the total self, disc. maybe we can stick with our many beings or aspects as a conglomeration of energy fields possessed of certain degrees of I AM consciousness.

mind boggling and identity feels submerged and ineffiable.

anyhoo, I think I'm here typing   theres was this retrieval I heard of when I first got here and I backed it up with reading older spiritualist books. an individual or perhaps several retrievers went to retrieve a person to the higher levels. as they did so, he became ambiguous, at first objecting to moving on, then a little more enlightened persuasion that it might be time to move, he began to rise happily into another area, and as everyone watched, his lower nature disengaged from his higher nature and slunk off to a bar in the lower astral valleys to partake of whiskey fumes happily. ?

the way I thought about this is his aspect which was addicted to liquor became a completed entity somehow with it's desire to not seek out higher thought and domain. perhaps we could call it the desire body?

I don't know. seemed so strange to me to have him split in two. also, the lower nature, desire body, whatever, could not enter the higher levels at all, but had it's own existence among "like-minded." it is well known there are entities of spirit which hang about a drinker and enjoy vicariously the drunkenness consciousness vibes. I consider that level of activity the lower astral. astral stands for emotions. thus we have the astral body.

now I've introduced the desire body as an astral being of the lower planes, closest to the physical plane, yet I'm still grasping how this could be explained and doing no better than anybody else.
what I do conjecture that the retrievals of such does help mankind's evolvement to not have the added influence of these lurking ones around the man in the bar, who may be influenced to "drink more."
I've also been told, or read it, to relax, these in the lowest field tend to float awhile and dissolve, if they cannot sustain themselves and find no host with which to be sustaining their consciousness. dissolve where and into what, I have no idea. I might conjecture further their molecules, their structure is weak with light, with what is love? and so theres a low intelligence operating, we might say an animal type of facet of the total man imbued with the survival instinct mainly.
I see them as a type of vital energy drainer. a spirit vampire, if they are asking the drinker to consume more.

it just makes me wonder how we humans can be so creative as to create these aspects of self which can then break off and assume their previous activities.
maybe nothing does die but that we come and transform what does not die.

I have one more story how light makes shadow disappear and that we are the light that makes this happen, but I already told the story! back to the books!

thanks, and do u think all your retrievals are your own self? or just in the sense that the entire human race is One? the shower guy aspect I retrieved seemed like a foreigner as far as I was concerned that I retrieved once. lol. I cracked up with that one!

There's a lot happening in your life Bets it seems!
I had too some retrievals of which I thought the retrievee is not an entire person, too unconscious, one-dimensional. So that's a subject on it's own to explore.
What came into my mind reading Bets' thoughts about it is an old post of you Alysia, where you told of the experience/theory that entities can be created between people, when they interact, an incorporation of the situation of the persons involved. So maybe Bets retrievee was a part of that person and a part of her in her previous life, an unsolved psychic energy taken on the form of a person, with a sort of half-own-consciousness fed from the both. It's a bit weird and confusing theory, but maybe there's something in it.

Spooky

Hmm-mm, 

'They say' that we get attached to our ideas, and those ideas are attached to other people's ideas that are the same, then to similiar ideas, etc.  So if the ideas attach, why not as well the people who hold them?  Especially if one person is a teacher or a strong person, it seems that in this way alot of people would be attached. Sort of like carrying a bunch of balloons!   
[Inset smilie carrying many helium balloons.]

Bets