Does GOD requires us to suffer for us to grow spiritually?

I am not sure if I understand your saying correctly: "It is just impossible that you have a life of your imagination and yet you get close to God." Pain is just in our imagination? Pain is not real? Pain is only real when you feel it real? as in the case of when you for a surgery and the doctor give anestesia to numb your pain or to knock you out. Or, as in the case of Stephen Hawking, he sees his physical condition as a challenge. But, why does he has to born that way? can he has a perfect body and still has a genius mind at the same time? He choose to be that way or God make him that way? Thank you for your input

Maria, let's say you desire to be born rich. You want to have great house. You have it. You just think of something and you have it. When things happen in that manner to you what will you state of mind be? Hmmm.. I am the sole controller of my destiny. I am the creator of my destiny! This is what I meant when I said if were getting the life of your imagination. Do you feel then there is a God at all? Change to this scene. For sometime things were happening the way you wanted them to, and suddenly you find as if every effort of yours were thwarted. Then you stop to take a look at your and others' suffering. A slight shade of doubt crops up in you whether really you are the controller of your destiny? You start by thinking of whether there exists something beyond you alone in this Universe which or who is regulating individual destinies into some grand plan. Then you posit that means let it be that there is a Super-duper or supreme power and start building into your plans or "imaginations" one more element of doubt. This is how God enters into our theory building. If you had a hard stance on something like say if were despising poverty then you top to take a second look at such a thing. God therefore doesn't teach by giving sermons from a pulpit but by making go through situations. Some highly imaginative people built beautiful "religions" around this limitations to human possibilities. But the true religion(in fact it is better to call it spirituality) enters you only when you personally connect with God or that Supreme Power that ultimately arranges the events in Life for you in such a manner that you "learn" by "tasting" reality and not as it is dictated in some religious Scripture. You are really miles away from God when you are only going by some Scriptural injunction, whether positive or negative. IOW, if you give up stealing because there is a commandment: Thou shalt not steal- you have really not grown much. You are just a follower of some religion. But you steal someone's something, and that pains that person so much that you move on to the position: I shall not steal- come what may even if you were say dying of hunger, then you have risen above your religion! So, I say suffering God's best way of making you close to Him. If Stephen Hawking has had MS and he has risen above the limitations and even if he just utters God, I say he has "risen" closer to God than the most comfortable and regularly praying mantis like me!

I agree with on the life of Buddha, but my question was and still is why couldn't he stay at his palace and still achieve enlightment? Why did he have to leave his home to meditate?

Well the palance is not exactly a very conducive place to meditate. There are so many distractions and he had his parents and wife and son too! On the other hand, if a person decides to give up worldly pleasures and attachments (as Sidhartha did), why the need for him to continues staying at home? The entire world then becomes his home and he feels like roaming everywhere.

You have a point there. As I observe people who follow their spiritual path often have problems with their spouse. I think because their thinkings are differrents also are their needs.