Hi Nanner
Bruce said something stuck with me through the years, that doing retrievals is sort of like a service to mankind and also a "back door entrance" in order to get your foot into the afterlife surroundings; like a way to get started with such exploration.
the only real job, at first, is to get the stuck person's attention.
then when they focus on you, there is PUL there. the PUL itself tends to widen their perception and it is at that point the guides or helpers, spirits who navigate this area expressly for this purpose can escort them to focus 27 or other bst levels where they can join the like minded. some retrievers go all the way with the guides but the initial job is getting their attention.
the reason it seems hard to explain that the guides of nonphysical cannot get their attention is they still believe that they are physical beings, as Bets said, whereever we go, whatever we do, we still feel that we are always ourself, our identity is always with us, and we so identify with being physical, if death occurs, and we are not prepared for that adventure, never bothered to study up on it, had no religion, etc. then passing from the body can seem like we're are somewhere, and we are existing, and we still have a body which seems quite physical, but it's an identity thing, and we just never thought about death, or the possibility that someday we would die and switch dimensions, where the rules are quite different, but we still are remaining with our belief systems also.
most people don't need retrieving, especially if they are with a long illness, their loved ones in spirit are attending to their transition in a daily step preparation, helping transition and moving them onward, so they are not stuck.
briefly, nowadays I see the act of retrieval can also be done on a living person by letting your aura expand around them in PUL. say theres a grouchy person, a clerk is ringing your order..I like to call this a retrieval. I think this person needs to relax. clerks have a hard time. they get harrassed when they're slow or whatever. they need a break. so I expand my aura outward thinking good thoughts how they try so hard. they usually look up and start smiling and we begin to converse and I call that a retrieval.
but my first real retrieval was back in the 80's. I read Monroe had a curl stuck to his leg. a little curl is a spirit, not evolved to its perfect potential yet. it was hitch hiking on Monroe's energy form. Monroe did not say this was a retrieval but I figured it out. I wondered if I could do what he did. all he did really was "allow" the little curl to ride along. then soon the curl blinked out when they approached a bst that looked interesting to the curl, and that was where it belonged.
as I wondered and wondered about this I started to send out signals of I wanted to expand myself into this area. Soon a guide came and took me to a retrieval. there was a young man who had been shot. he was re-living the traumatic circumstances as in a loop. he was stuck in his dream of being shot. I received instructions to retrieve his attention, when I got his attention there was PUL between us, and he finally stopped being in a panic for a moment as he looked at me. it was touch and go for awhile though. as I maintained his attention, it expanded his awareness to be able to see, there were helpers all around just waiting for him to notice, they wanted to help him move away from this trauma, it had been looping like a movie clip. I didn't understand until years later how people can loop like this, here as well as there.
Nanner, you have me curious about the Dave TM thing, what does that look like?
love, alysia
heres an image of a retrieval, sort of, for fun.