Another relevant important thing to contemplate is the following:
Human body can endure pain in a limited range. It cannot endure the types of pain that can be endured in some lower realms. If subjected to such suffering, the human body will perish momentarily.
In the same way, a human body cannot experience the pleasures that can be experienced by a deva body.
Therefore, it is only a limited range of pain or pleasure that can be experienced in a given realm.
We all are likely to have done both good and bad kamma in the past. Those really bad kamma will bring vipaka only when we are born in the lower realms.
– Those really good kamma will bring highly-pleasurable vipaka only when we are born in a deva realm (Of course, when one dies there all that pleasure will turn to much suffering).
However, if one cultivates panna and attains the Sotapanna stage, one will never be born in an apaya to experience those bad vipaka. Then those “bad kamma” done in the past will become “ahosi kamma”, i.e., they will never again bring vipaka.
– This is why Buddha Dhamma is called a “hetu-phala vāda”, not a “kamma-phala vāda”. Kamma plays an important role, but kamma vipaka can be overcome by removing the CONDITIONS to bring those vipaka to fruition. Those CONDITIONS are in Paticca Samuppada.
– It is essentially the “upādāna paccayā bhava” that can stop a future bhava (and thus jāti or births) from arising. That step will not go through certain types of bhava, depending on whether one has attained Sotapanna, Sakadagami, etc stages of Nibbana. Of course, no bhava will be grasped by an Arahant.
Buddha never denied that one can have pleasurable experiences in human and higher realms. However, birth in any realm will end up in much suffering in the long run. Any and all suffering will be stopped only when the rebirth process is stopped (mainly because in the long run, one WILL BE born mostly in the apayas; see, “How the Buddha Described the Chance of Rebirth in the Human Realm“).
– This is the key message of the Buddha. This may not be easy to understand, but this is what is explained in the First Noble Truth.