We progress by being able to combine with other spiritual beings at the same level of spiritual development to make a new group more advanced than any of us can be individually. We would have to become ready to be part of such a group, or entity. We would need to understand, trust, and be fulfilled before our present spiritual reality would be able to fit in elsewhere. Life is the process by which our present spiritual reality comes to understand, trust, and be fulfilled . As we live, we have opportunities through experience to learn, and that which we both learn and remember becomes a permanent part of who we are spiritually.
Many people learn a lot, but it is the same thing over and over again.
The key is to both learn and remember. This usually does not happen in a single lifetime. In any given lifetime we only get a piece of what we must learn in order to understand, trust, and be fulfilled. Each time we are milled and molded, filed and filled, formed and informed by that which is learned and remembered. We live again and again until we have a clear, full sense of who and what we are spiritually.