Bashar says,"Enlightenment is just lightening up on yourselves." So, easy does it. Sure, enjoy all those things you enumerated but you can also open up to enjoying just sitting and doing nothing. BEING.

Here's a little poem I wrote, riffing off the Bible: "Be still and know I AM God."

Be still and know that I AM God. Be still and know that I AM. Be still and know. Be still. BE. BE. Be still. Be still and know. Be still and know that I AM. Be still and know that I AM God.

If we are really being here now, making friends with the present moment and whatever it holds, we may still experience suffering, but we will more easily move through it while learning the lessons it also holds for us.

Imagine if every day when you woke up you were offered the chance to learn how to walk and you replied..."but I already know how to walk.." and then you were offered the chance to know how to communicate...with "Lets learn the A,B,C's and you replied " but I already know that as well..." and then you were offered the chance to learn how to count...with "OK then lets learn the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4..etc"
and you replied " Wait a minute...everything that you are offering.. I already know. Can't you give me an activity that is brand new and engaging of my curiosity and desire to learn and expand?"

Imagine if everything that you encountered in life was as familiar as this example and there was nothing left for you to know about anything anymore.

Wouldn't you be glad for this thing called forgetfulness that allows you to re-discover things in a new and exciting way

That's why we enter this experience within a wall of insomnia and re-discover our knowingness

That's why thoughts occur and are not a result of random memory magically creating meaning and coherency out of disjointed past experiences.

When a thought occurs, we are downloading our knowingness into a stream of awareness that is beyond our current learned knowledge.

But we exist within an ego-centric trap of insomnia and learned knowledge as our only available reference point.

when a thought occurs we actually download a wide stream of knowing awareness that is beyond our current learned knowledge, but the stream consists of bursts of archetypal collective knowledge that requires an interpretive language to make sense of it.

And our learned knowledge becomes the tool of interpretation just like a sports caster narrating the play by play, except here the learned knowledge becomes the language of describing the action within the archetypal stream.

An so it always seems like our thinking consists of the re-use of our learned knowledge, when in fact that is the limitation of our intellect.

That is why when you don't have the answer and you try to think the answer it is unavailable to you.

Because Thinking is limited to what you already know. But listening is where the "occurrence" of the answer awakens.

Because every thought is not a "think" but is actually a "listen"

It is a "listen and interpret," where, that which is listened to is interpreted using what you currently know.

and so the analytical thinker confidently holds on to only what can be "recalled" from learning, and rejects all the other data like water running through the gaps on ones fingers boldly proclaiming that if knowledge is presented it has to have been learned from elsewhere for where else can it originate from?

and further more, ridicules the mind that comes up with ideas that cannot be verified against existing knowledge or source data.

So it's a catch 22

You can be enlightened and have an open connection to your knowingness, where you will be learning to walk and learning your A,B,C's and your 1, 2, 3's every moment of every day because everything is already known and instantly updated with every new point of reference within creation.

Or you can enjoy your Ego centric Intellectual ignorance where you compare your very limited learned knowledge against everyone else's learned knowledge and ridicule others who don't share your specific ignorance.

Or you can take the two sides and incorporate the best of both by understanding how the whole picture fits together, and this method of awareness is the 4th density into which mankind is currently starting to awaken.

So the new "Awakening" that is happening is the realization that you are the drop of water in the ocean whose consciousness is the ocean itself as seen from the point of reference of the drop but only aware consciously as the drop and unconsciously as the ocean.

But it is from the ocean that the drop is getting all its ideas and is trying to give it meaning from the limited learned knowledge of the drop.

But if it stops using it's intellect to quantify the source, it will hear more of the ocean.

So the real answer to the question do we suffer until we achieve enlightenment?

Suffering is a decision...and once it is made you can choose to suffer regardless of whether you are enlightened or not

perhaps to be enlightened
is why you are here, the short
wave chosen to save time,
had undisclosed circumstance