Yet for the past to inform the present, it is effectively consumed by it. In order for someone to find the treasure chest, it cannot remain in the past, but has to remain, as a fairly stable form, in a constantly changing present.

Have you ever noticed how your memories of prior events tend to be subtly changed over the years, as your mind re-arranges them in relation to other events and the process of memory is constantly writing over and around them?

It isn’t simply that cause precedes effect, but that cause becomes effect. The energy that is the former becomes the later, so that the form that is the former informs the later.