Why would your god not want people to indulge in life's pleasures and enjoy life? And since everyone experiences pain and disappointment, I don't think anyone believes that life is nothing but pleasure and joy. However, it's by seeking out the pleasures and joys of everyday life that we create a life worth living. Why would your god only converse with you if your life is without pleasure or joy? Furthermore, why would you want to converse with a god that insists you live a life without pleasure or joy? Personally, I would avoid such a god at all costs. To me life is precious, it's meant to be celebrated and enjoyed to the fullest.
Well, it's not
my God per se. And of course God wants us to enjoy life to the fullest. Perhaps an analogy would be helpful here.
I am raising a two year old daughter. Sometimes she wants orange juice. Now, I want her to enjoy the orange juice, of course, and I know she needs the vitamin C. But I also know that orange juice has a lot of sugar in it, and childhood obesity is a real thing (no, it really is). So after she's drunk enough OJ for the day, I don't give her any more, no matter how much she whines or begs or pleads or cries.
Especially if she is crying. My reasoning is twofold:
1) A human being who thinks that whining and crying and complaining is the way to accomplish anything is sadly mistaken. Each time we throw a fit and actually get what we want, we are weakened. What is weakened? Our willpower, our ability to think clearly, and our personal discipline are weakened every time we indulge
senselessly.
2) Once 100% daily allotment of vitamin C is reached, there is no more need to drink orange juice that day. Being able to enjoy things in moderation without wanting more is not just good for the body, it is also good practice for controlling ourselves. Good judgment sounds great as a principle, but I would suggest hardly anyone exercises good judgment from moment to moment. Almost everyone is just running blindly after pleasure without thought for consequences, lifelong goals, or long term planning, to say nothing about spirituality.
A person without self-discipline is just a slave to their desires, a robot who runs from pleasure to pleasure while lacking the rationality to understand moderation, chastity, good judgment, and grace. It's not that "my God" doesn't want me to enjoy myself, it is more that there are stages to our multiple lifetimes, things we learn from stage to stage. See, I'm hoping my daughter will mature emotionally with my help and guidance. She has to learn how to talk to other people without trying to get something out of them. She needs to learn how to share, how to listen, and how to love others for who they are.
She is never going to do this if she cannot first learn to direct her attention.
So "my God" sticks me into a human body so I can learn about cause and effect. If I eat too many simple carbohydrates, I'm going to get fat and maybe die earlier of heart disease. If I sleep around a lot, I'm going to create karma with other human beings as I train wreck from one relationship to the next. If I cut people off on the freeway, maybe I get into an accident and end up killing someone (also creates karma). I can go on and on about the mess we make for ourselves as human beings before we can think clearly and exercise good judgment.
OF COURSE YOU SHOULD ENJOY LIFE. Enjoy it as much as you can. However, I would like to humbly suggest that different people are at different stages of their spiritual journey. A person only becomes a true seeker once they are tired of the mundane joys that a
human life can offer: food, sex, wealth, fame, the adoration of peers. Maybe we'll throw distractions like video games and Netflix in there. If a child is ready for addition and subtraction, let's do that. If a child is ready for calculus, let's go take a class on calculus. If a human being is ready for spirituality, then they are ready to talk about discipline, which is nothing more than the conscious ability to direct attention. More spiritually mature people become able to decide what to put their attention on. It's very powerful. If you think about chocolate, if you have matured spiritually you do not have to run out to eat chocolate. You can stay focused on whatever it was you were doing.
EDIT: Put differently, it is not the pleasures we seek that are "bad,' it is our attachment (and slavery) to them. You can only put your attention upon so many things, and if the attention is placed upon chocolate your love of chocolate grows. If you place it on God, your love of God grows. And if you place it on chocolate, you are not placing it on God, and if you are going about your day ignoring God, why should God give a rat's *** about you?
As a little tantalizer, most people cannot get real, tangible spiritual results because they are unable to concentrate their spiritual energies at the tisra til. There is no hope of real spiritual progress to realize the true self without clear thinking, discipline, concentration, and spiritual love (not the lower attachment of co-dependent love).