My belief on why God created man...

One of man's questions, in the area of religion or spirituality, has always been "Why did God create man?" Being raised Catholic, I was taught that man was created to worship God. For years, that was an accepted belief for me. This is what the Bible taught. I feel as if I have always "known" there is a God, although my concept of God now is far displaced from that little girl in the uniform. I was also taught that the Bible is the Word of God. I still believe that. However, I do not believe that there is only one book of God's word. Furthermore, I believe that the Bible is imbued with many levels of learning. After all, it has to be. If it is to be a guide for all, then it must address those at all levels of awareness. So, now I can find deeper meaning in the Bible, and it seems the deeper I look, the more "settled" my soul feels.
So, back to the question, "Why did God create man?"
Well, for a while now, I had been having problems accepting what I had supposedly been 'taught' by the Bible. Things like, 'God created man so that he could worship Him.' That just hit me as too egotistical of a reason for God, who, in my belief, has no ego.
My concept of why God created man:
God/Universal Consciousness/One is the potential for all experiences; however, this was only potential for love, happiness, joy, bliss...in short...heaven. One chose to experience heaven, to feel it. On my personal journey, I have found that I can only experience a feeling to the depth that I am also willing to experience its opposite. It's like swinging...you can only go as high forward as you are willing to go backwards. Sure, you could have someone standing under you to stop you from going back, but they'd also have to do the pushing to get you going forward. That's just not swinging...propelling yourself to reach the greatest height you dare.
So, why did God create man? Because He knew that He couldn't experience heaven without hell, joy without sorrow, peace without strife. Our human experience is us, God, choosing to feel. I don't believe that there's a God 'out there' waiting for us to come back to Him. I believe that we are God, experiencing, learning to swing as high as we can, so we can feel the bliss of heaven.
So, swing on......