Once when I was giving a lecture series on reincarnation, someone asked me, "Who cares? What difference does it make if I know about my past lives?"
I answered that understanding our past lives is one way we can receive the awareness we need to do our spiritual job in this world. It is said that for someone to start the process of recovery from an addiction, that person needs to acknowledge that he or she is addicted in the first place. So too it is with reincarnation.
The Bible talks about punishing the iniquity of one generation to the next. Taken literally, this sounds like punishing innocent children. But what the Kabbalists reveal is that it refers to the lifetimes we are given to come back, to make amends, and to elevate the Light of our soul.
Many times it is very hard to find the root of our issues. But when we can look beyond this lifetime, and be open to the idea that perhaps what we are experiencing today is connected to something that happened before, it becomes easier to pinpoint and accept what we need to change and make the appropriate corrections.
"Our job is to elevate the Light of our soul."