Hi R, I think and this just a thought, that coming into flesh with a certain game plan to unfold our creativity in areas of our choosing, it all looks quite doable. then we come here and find out we were perhaps over optimistic. there seems to be some time periods, lives, where mere survival of the body is all that can be thought of, let alone higher truths.

I reflect a lot on what happens inbetween lifetimes. while yet knowing I do not understand simultaneous lives, but I try.
I did meet a fellow once who was remembering his inbetween life circumstance. He said his guides told him it was going to be especially difficult for him if he chose to come into a body before going to some classrooms designed for ELS visitors to prep them.
I believed what he said, as he always seemed a bit nervous and lost. like he was a fish out of water. I later found the classroom he attended at night. It was all about cultivating and using desire.

wrong classroom for moi, and so our relationship ended.

so to a certain extent I am agreeing with you, life can be a struggle, and there can be found lessons within suffering through challenges, yet free will is to be able even to choose not to go to the prep class, and so some people who look empty headed, as actually that, empty headed, insofar they may not have a clue why they are here, or why they came here and now wish they hadn't of signed up.

One thing I truly believe in, is that the soul when it enters a spiritual path, of their choosing, assistance is automatically given, in the form of guides who work through the intuitive part of us. In this I mean specifically, this soul will not be given anything that is not within their ability to handle. they will come under the law of grace. their way will become smooth.

Kathy and I were just discussing how as healers, with that ability, we both have encountered people who will not accept the healing we offer. and so they are learning through pain, as they cannot accept their healing for reasons unknown to the healer.
In that case, suffering and pain and the challenges inherent in the sufferer carries it's own personal meaning to each, as I think each person has to realize their own ability to heal themselves.

I think retrievals heal, by allowing life to move out of the stuck belief by transmuting the fear around the belief system.

Fear seems to come with ELS. it sort of disintegrates when love approaches and so PUL energy has much to do with Monroe's loosh crop analogy, that we do produce here in ELS, but as I see it, a progression of lives where opportunity is afforded.
the beatles said it better "love is all you need."