Leading and Submitting

I find an interesting conflict between feeling 'in charge' of one's life and decisions and submitting or even surrendering to the moment. Contemplative practices tend to focus around the latter, under the premise that there is so much rich experience already available to the present moment. Without an attitude of simply surrendering to the delight and treasures of the moment, we would end up missing so much of that richness. On the other hand, there is a certain value which comes from having a direction in life: taking a vow, doing something for the sake of applying oneself and accomplishing tasks, and benefiting society as a result. I somehow believe that both processes are necessary to a balanced life, but I am still not able to ascertain how to arrive at such a balance in life. Perhaps the problem is insoluble in that respect; there is never a complete and total balance in the end.
  Interestingly however, 'submission' is a word that one needs to be careful about, because the submission I am describing is not something that is against my wishes or will. Paradoxically, the only submission that is really of any value seems to be the one that one wholeheartedly chooses. Without the element of choice, one feels like a body that is just passively submitting to the wishes and wills of others, and this often leads to a kind of resentment and resistance. When submission is talked about in spiritual traditions, it seems to be the point where the self is fully resolved to such a focused point in time that it is finally willing to 'explode itself', a little bit like the concentrated energies that matter must have been like at around the time of the Big Bang. It is almost as if the self has become so focused into one squeezed point of resolution that it has no other choice but to go beyond itself. Huatou practice is, for me, an example of where the self is concentrated into a single passion to know the mind, and this provides an opportunity for the self to literally get out of its own way. Without the passionate doubt of this practice, the self is still a scattered series of impressions, and there is no existential question underlying it.
  I strongly feel that before there can be such an experience of surrendering, there has to be a validation of the experience of being 'as a self', because this is where one is finally resolved to treat the issues of life seriously and connect them into a single question. To submit to that question, one has to have a strong resolve to lead themselves to that point in time.