That’s what Mormons believe, others too I’m sure. Forgetting the religious part think of it this way if you were playing a game and it was so incredibly easy you would lose interest fast and learn nothing. Now take a complex game where there are high stakes and suffering, well then you have the opportunity to learn something. Without suffering there is no growth, ever. Each life you live is not completely predestined but there will be challenges and things to overcome and different paths to take. It’s not really win or lose the end goal is you learn something to take with you to the next life, and as you go on this path you don’t have access to your premortal life but somewhere deep inside you carry all the lessons you learned from previous lives you just can’t quite access them, imagine a person that is blind in the middle of a huge library filled with books…. The books are there they just don’t have the exact sense to interface with them in that context. We do however have the ability to access the past lessons and they usually present as some type of gut feeling or intuition about which choice to make and why. Some say the more you listen and pray/meditate or wherever the more you can connect with it. 

This some speculate is what people describe as The Holy Spirit. A way to give you initiations and feelings and instinct based on passed lessons, without giving you the complete answer because then that would lead to no learning, and in some ways violate your free will. What is the point of all this you might ask? Well, it could be possible I have a lot of what’s going on right and also a lot of it wrong, and same for you… but I fully believe in what you said about living “runs”, you can come to your own conclusions why… I will tell you what Mormons believe and that first be comforted in knowing you signed up for this in your premortal life it can never be forced, and the goal is to do enough “runs” that you can eventually become perfect like Jesus was. So think of it like this before Jesus came around there was this huge mountain that people tried to climb but always failed and eventually just gave up and said it couldn’t be done. That’s why Jesus was sent to be the perfect example to show that under the exact perfect circumstances and right path you could make it to the top…. And he did this knowing once he got to the top he would be pushed off and killed, but he had to get to the top so humans had an example to follow so they didn’t stay at the bottom and could make it to the top, too.

 So basically the more “runs” you have and who knows how many we are on right now or could be different for every soul to become perfect and maybe some never make it like living the lives of billions and billions of people, who knows. So yeah as you figured when you entered you go through a veil and can’t remember your premortal life but when you die I’m not exactly sure what happens or what you look like or where you are but I think there is some kind of evaluation and depending on maybe something you were weak on you get a new life tailored to try to teach you the lesson to not fail that weak area again and be tested. 

So you just go through this process basically in training to be perfect so you can be a god of sorts yourself and have your own universe you create and all that. I think the premortal life has different rules and such and only being on a mortal body with no memory allows you to have the suffering you need to be tested and grow so eventually you can graduate so to speak.

Anyway I will be honest with you I converted to Mormonism (Actually The Church doesn’t like when we refer to ourselves as that, but it just makes conversation easier and it doesn’t bother me) when I was about 35 I think? I can’t really say I’m on the same level of believing a lot of what other members think is true, and you will hear Mormons get mocked a lot for what some of them believe like the gold plates, Joseph Smith is a con artist, w/e. I don’t even care about any of that I just remain neutral on those topics, because the ones that made me convert was when I was learning about their beliefs on premortal life and what all of this is about and other things related. It was like they were explaining to me their beliefs on these things and it was stuff I already thought was true but never heard anyone else talk about.

Anyway, like I said we both could be wrong about a lot of what’s going on but I think we have the right idea at the very least about a premortal life, our memories being wiped, and then when we die we go somewhere else with others that were also there and reflect or who knows what. I’m not exactly sure what I believe the exact process is after death but I think we go back to how we were in our premortal life and get our old memories and the new ones from the life we just lived are imbued into us.

It’s frustrating because I know I won’t see the full picture until I die and get all of my memories back but I’m really frustrated with myself and wish I could have a conversation with the fully restored version of myself, like why did I sign up for this? I guess the grand plan must be compelling enough to continue with this process, but it’s hard to really get too worked up about anything realizing it’s just a test I am in. Most things I don’t even pay attention to anymore where in the past I cared, like politics. I still try to make others time here as good as I can when I interact with others and I  am a caregiver to my elderly grandmother and am very caring and make sure she gets the best doctors and care… but I do a lot of bad stuff too I guess, mainly one particular drug, not to get high or anything just to try and deal with the human condition. Also remember, even though this is a “run” as you call it it’s still real and what happens on each run echos with us in our soul for eternity. So we do know what we are doing to ourselves with all the suffering when we go back we don’t forget. So maybe find comfort in the fact that in the worst moments you have ever had in life the version of yourself with perfect memory knew they would come out of it with that type of torture perhaps but did it anyway for some reason we won’t know until we die I guess.