“If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.  First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine.  Then why desire to evolve at all, you may ask.  If you ask this question, perhaps you do not know enough of joy.” ~ Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled