Trusting the Moment to Unfold

  I didn't particularly want to join the social gathering, with all its loud music and festive cheer. Somehow, it felt intrusive to my desire to catch up on work during the day. But when I got there, I realized that I could accept and be at peace with my heart, even when I felt unwilling to be there. I could sense the memory of past experiences, when people would talk me into attending events or use fear to persuade me. And I could recall experiences when I felt this body somehow being pushed and pulled: here going in this direction, then being pulled back.
      But this time, as I entered the room, something different happened. Rather than giving into reactions, I tried just seeing the reaction emerge in the empty space of the moment. And instead of being fooled into thinking my mind was being moved, there was this simple thought arising, "I think I am being moved". Seeing it as a thought helped to understand that there is nobody being moved in this scene. Even when there is the feeling that 'my body' was forced to be in the room, in fact all the room is in awareness. Mind is not one of these elements that is being 'moved'. It is only the thought that gives the illusion that "I" am moved. Who is this "I" anyway? Again, I look to the method of huatou (meditative question/saying) to understand where the true nature is. And what arose was this sense of completeness: an awareness that all there is, is, and there is nothing more to add to what is. To add is to try to complete an already 'full' moment that is already passing to another moment. It was hard to sustain this experience, but at least for a moment, I gave myself permission to experience it in some manner.
    This practice is not about pleasing other beings. Quite the opposite, it is the simple knowing that beings are already connected in awareness. To try to appease 'others' commits one to the mistake of thinking there is a separate 'other' to be appeased or even feared. But in that present situation, can anyone say where one person's experience begins and another person's ends? In fact, the entire experience is totality. From this totality, I trust the experience to unfold as it is, and I keep asking where the 'self' is, and wonder whether there is any need for the self at all.
    If in that moment, I start to say 'what am I doing with this?', I lose the experience of being truly here in the moment. Instead, I go back to this mentality of constantly projecting into the future that never 'is', a kind of fantasy wish-fulfillment or anticipation of 'things to come'. And this projection only commits me deeper and deeper into its vicious spiral of always promising to deliver what never quite emerges. I think it's something to keep in mind when people are trying to approach spirituality as 'socially engaged'. Sometimes the engagement is simply the moment itself,  and conveying that moment. But as soon as I say 'now what'? What do I 'do with this?" I am again committing this mistake of projecting this present moment into a future moment. And this is another duality. To enter true engagement is to enter into trust. It is very difficult to 'engage' from a planning mentality of trying so hard to 'create' an experience. I think this is why there  is a lot of stress on acceptance of the moment in spiritual practices.