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Transcending vs. Embracing

I'm trying to decide what the balance between transcending and embracing should be? I mean if our purpose is to fully embrace and experience life, then do we really want to transcend our experiences? I would think it would be better to relish the experience rather than try to escape or overcome it? For example, when I gashed open my shin, I told myself it wasn't pain. I used my mind to "transcend" the experience. I told myself that the surge of sensation I was feeling in my shin was simply that, sensation. I was really amazed at how effective this method was in helping me deal with the pain. But now, I'm wondering if the same effect could be had by coming at the pain another way? What if, in this shin situation, instead of seeking to minimize the pain, I had instead moved toward the pain? Could looking pain in the eyes and embracing it with open curiosity have been equally effective in helping me deal with the pain?

Why do we immediately assume pain is bad and to be avoided? What if holding the pain is precisely what we need to do in order to better understand it's origin? What if intimately holding and dancing with our experience(s) enables us to ultimately stop the tendency to react with "Fight, Flight, or Freeze?"

A wise man once said that all it takes to overcome fear is to look fear in the eyes. Face your fears and they will flee? I don't know that one or the other is always the one or only way to proceed or process life experiences. In fact, the more I think about it, I think embracing our experiences is what leads to liberation. And if liberation is semantically the same as transcendence, then I see that the question isn't really "to transcend or to embrace?" Instead, the path to liberation comes through embracing your experiences for when we embrace what is, we become free. Free from illusion and free from suffering. We allow life to teach us the lessons we most need to learn right now.

One last experience to illustrate my point. I had a less than stellar mommy moment. I reacted to my child in a less than compassionate way. Naturally, I felt like a terrible mother. I witnessed my self-beratement and I immediately tried to push those feelings of regret and guilt away. I tried to "transcend" the negative feelings. I then remembered the wise words concerning "embracing our experiences" and so I decided to sit there and really examine my feelings of guilt. I let them wash over me and I stayed with them. You know what? It felt kind of crummy. But acknowledging and fully felling my crumminess is what ultimately allowed those feelings to pass on through. They haven't cropped back up and I am done feeling bad about my behavior. I am not a bad person. I'm a really good person who sometimes does bad things. And I even hate using the word "Bad" because it feels so untrue. We all just make mistakes. It's part of our humanness. I'm not bad, and I'm not perfect. And I don't need to transcend any of this. . . I'm embracing it instead.
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