The Experience of What Arises I just read within this question that the accomplished arhats, and perhaps the Buddha, still feel pain though they lack aversion to it. I had contemplated for a long time to generate insight and reasons, analytically, to tackle the arising of negative thoughts and attitudes.

However, this process was seemingly effective in preventing the arising of negativity, but seems contrary to fully experiencing reality without attachment or aversion. 

1) When a person just sits, aren't they, in a sense, with equanimity towards all that arises? Any orientation towards thoughts or experience changes with time, and it is time--in meditation--which determines the untangling of what arises.

2) Wouldn't equanimity towards all aspects of experience create a different result than either distraction or insight relative to what arises?
It's a gradual training. According to Buddha, we need to develop skill at the coarser, more invasive levels before proceeding to the more refined and subtle.

So initially we learn to stop, to suppress, to manipulate by switching attention. Then we learn to stimulate positive emotions through discursive sequences. Then we learn to tune our mood directly through immediate effort. Then we get to levels when we are practically effortless and purely contemplative, but that comes only with great mastery.

From Gavi Sutta:


  "Suppose there was a mountain cow — foolish, inexperienced, unfamiliar with her pasture, unskilled in roaming on rugged mountains — and she were to think, 'What if I were to go in a direction I have never gone before, to eat grass I have never eaten before, to drink water I have never drunk before!' She would lift her hind hoof without having placed her front hoof firmly and [as a result] would not get to go in a direction she had never gone before, to eat grass she had never eaten before, or to drink water she had never drunk before. And as for the place where she was standing when the thought occurred to her, 'What if I were to go where I have never been before... to drink water I have never drunk before,' she would not return there safely. Why is that? Because she is a foolish, inexperienced mountain cow, unfamiliar with her pasture, unskilled in roaming on rugged mountains.
  
  ... 
  
  "But suppose there was a mountain cow — wise, experienced, familiar with her pasture, skilled in roaming on rugged mountains — and she were to think, 'What if I were to go in a direction I have never gone before, to eat grass I have never eaten before, to drink water I have never drunk before!' She would lift her hind hoof only after having placed her front hoof firmly and [as a result] would get to go in a direction she had never gone before... to drink water she had never drunk before. And as for the place where she was standing when the thought occurred to her, 'What if I were to go in a direction I have never gone before... to drink water I have never drunk before,' she would return there safely. Why is that? Because she is a wise, experienced mountain cow, familiar with her pasture, skilled in roaming on rugged mountains.