I agree with almost everything you wrote and I don't disagree with anything. My perspective is a little different because my soul has always been here. This is my 17,046th incarnation and all but three have been as a human (I've always assumed the other three were as other animals here, perhaps an elephant, but I've never asked my guides--it's possible I visted elsewhere). I have come to realize it's all about experience. For someone to experience being the victim of evil someone has to agree to perpetrate it. Maybe the latter wanted to experience that or maybe just agreed to because someone has to for all this to work. I love this piece by White Feather ( https://medium.com/recycled/forgotten-selves-be8baec80024 ) in which he writes:

"What if every single person you meet in your life you’ve met before in other lives? Imagine that for a moment just for fun. No one is a stranger. Everyone is a soul-mate acting out every conceivable sort of relationship.

It is like taking two actors and putting them on a stage then giving them a few hundred different plays to act out together. In one play actor A is a father and actor B is a daughter. In another play actor A is a soldier and actor B is also a soldier who happens to kill actor A. In another play actors A and B fall in love and have seven kids. In another play, actors A and B never meet until right before they die. In yet another play actor A is a wife who is beaten by her husband who happens to be actor B. In still another life actors A and B end up being a songwriting team as well as gay lovers who write several Broadway musicals together. Then there is the life A and B lived together in the jungles of Sumatra. It was primitive times and A and B were hunting together. A slipped on a steep ledge on the side of a mountain and breaks his leg. B is afraid to climb down to save A and he leaves A to die."

I quote that in my 17-minute exploration of reincarnation and soul contracts (I prefer to call them improv scripts because of free will) https://medium.com/illumination-curated/life-is-school-for-the-soul-9b081dbe8453

I don't like calling any of this a simulation because it's very real while we are here and to me it minimizes or is almost dismissive to call it a simulation. I could go on and on but don't want to. I liked your 5 lines on feeling. Reminded me of a poem I wrote, which I quote in part:

"Souls only possess mere telepathy

Cannot smell aroma of your perfume

Or see eyes shine upon love at first sight

Or taste pleasure in all that we consume

Or feel skins’ heat of orgasmic delight

See the colors of Kim’s double rainbow

Feel dogs’ loving kiss all over my face

See the stars twinkle from Heaven below

Gaze on Gaia’s beauty blue dot in space

But all these words don’t describe magic prize

Leaving me breathless when I’m in your thighs"

The rest of the poem and my companion essay are here: https://medium.com/living-out-loud/why-should-i-come-back-625b199f083c