So some people have had a positive experience in an Akashic type reading! Thanks for sharing about yourselves.
Here's what I think holds us back. In the Records it shows that life is composed of an event and response (or partial response that I call a reaction). So when we're looking at the past, we can see both, but when asking about the future, we can only see events and probable responses/reactions. If we reacted in the past (from some type of internal conflict - limiting beliefs, resistance to feeling emotions, etc), whether in this life or another, then we create a ripple effect where we keep re-creating similar situations until we respond completely (i.e. same relationships, same jobs, etc). This is the need for reincarnating to complete karma (our own conflict). Once we have no karmic issues left to complete, we can then incarnate simply because we want to. If we know how to respond (a full body-soul expression in the present moment) then the originating issue, in any life, becomes resolved and our external circumstances become less and less important.
So the karma (internal conflict) that we carry from other lives until we resolve it, and unresolved conflict from our current life issues, are always begging to be released with a response. It's not so much that our soul needs to be healed/retrieved, as much as conflict wants to be released. The soul itself is always perfect in it's form, unable to have it's essence tainted.
And look what's happening collectively now. As our collective consciousness shifts from collective seperation to unification, every conflict is pressing up from our subconsciousness into our consciousness, wanting to be acknowledged and released. It's extremely difficult to hide from ourselves right now.

And time is literally compressing and moving towards simultaneousness, which makes it feel like we have more to do in less time.
So anywhere that we don't match our thoughts, feelings, words and actions would be something to watch. Any motive for still being externally-validating and not internally-validating is important to notice. Any judgment, negative core belief, and any excuse to not be completely ourselves is conflict.
What are your thoughts/experience?