Iyk -I don’t understand why you’re assuming that connection to hashem means that we would automatically be in gan eden. Much of your assault on halacha and hashkafa seems to come from your own assessment of the torah ideas that you’ve either read about or been taught, but if they are leading in the direction of violation of the Torah, are you honestly pursuing the truth? Is rationalization and justification of your own shortcomings not a more reasonable explanation?
Just to clarify, the mesilas yeshorim in the first perek says that “the only “good” is being close to, connected to hashem. That’s the pasuk “veahi kirvas elokim li tov”, the only way to get that is mitzvos. Then he says that if so, all situations in this world, whether suffering or pleasure, are not inherently good or bad. Since “pen esba vekikashti veamarti mi hashem, ufen ivaresh veganavti”, “lest i become satisfied and i will deny and say “who is hashem”(i.e. forgetting that hashem is the source of the good situation) and lesr i become poor and i will steal(forgetting that it is hashem who makes us poor or rich and will provide for us even if we don’t steal).
He then addresses your question. He says that the main place for this closeness is olam haba. It was created with the perfection to sustain such an existence. However, he says one can and will attain “olam haba on this world” by doing the mitzvos and not sinning. It will be a life of connecting to hashem on our level, “shlaimu haamiti”, true perfection in his words.
That suffering is for our benefit is axiomatic in Judaism. If you would rather believe in the fake santa claus god who only gives us what we want and what we think is good, there are many idolatrous religions such as Zoroastrianism which believe in two gods, one good and one bad, which fit that horrible worldview. But Judaism says shema yisroel hashem elokeinu(lashon din, judgement) hashem (lashon mercy) echad
It sounds like you were either educated by chabad, with elevated concepts emphasized to you without teaching basics, like the mesilas yeshorim i quoted. Or you were taught not to ask questions by uneducated teachers who lack the knowledge to answer you when you were in high school. Either way you’ve come out with a mindset that if you can ask a question on a gemara or a sefer, that you have disproven it and can walk away ignoring what it says. In Yeshiva we question everything and raise contradictions all the time; this is why I was reasonably sure that you were a woman, because had you been to a Yeshiva and seen the way an average Yeshiva bochur analyzes a text yet leaves the beis medrash believing fully in the truth of what he has learned….. You wouldn’t be so quick to disregard basic torah ideas because you have a question.
honestly the mesilas yeshorim is the most fundamental work of musar and hashkafa that we have, and most of your tirades are disproven in literally the first 2 pages of the first chapter, much of which i quoted above.