Brett suggested (over Facebook) I post about something painful I am currently going through that is prompting a lot of even more painful self-examination. Whilst I don't think Corrupt is ready to handle my pre-menstrual, explosive, female levels of sensitivity, I found it interesting that he suggested "pain is a gateway drug to transcendence."

I flirted with ascetic interpretations of Eastern philosophy, more specifically, those featured in the Tao Te Ching or Bhagavad Gita. For those of you unfamiliar, general principles present in many Eastern philosophies seem to dictate that attachment cultivates pain and pleasure. In the Indian tradition, ridding yourself of attachment means also that you have to un-identify with your worldly ego in favour of the absolute soul. My interpretation of the Tao suggests that merely being mindful is the route to transcendence. Mindfulness is a hyper-awareness of things occurring in the moment.

How you choose to approach transcendence is often the mark of distinction between varying philosophies, though I would favour mindfulness and being-in-the-world as philosophically and personally a more important developmental experience over the aim of completely purging both pain and pleasure from your existence.

The latter can often lead to philosophical idealism, and radical ascetic practices that reject the world. The former is a more healthy way of being in the world, and moreover, accepting the world as real.

Having done mindfulness training as part of a therapeutic process, there are practical effects to be reaped by having the pain pass through you in a kind of metacognitive awareness. I favour this over a type of yoga previously practiced - the name escapes me - involving prolonging certain bodily positions, until they become painful, and then painless.

Ridding yourself of pain also means ridding yourself of pleasure, and I think recognizing ourselves as fallible, fundamentally human, creatures bear a lot more rewards in this world. Being mindful is subtle transcendence. Subtletly, letting yourself experience pain, and even pleasure, can sometimes be a much more challenging experience than isolating yourself from it.