Let's say you saw somebody walking up to your front door and they had this big brick of gold. How many wish that was true? Here's a big brick of gold: "Ah! A reward! Now I can go buy that thing. I can do what I always wanted to do!" But as the person got closer, you could see that the brick of gold had a chip on the side and that it was actually lead underneath. How many of you would still say, "Come on in and bring that leaden load into my house"? Would you have any problem letting go of the feeling of yourself that a moment before was filled with all this wonderful sense of yourself? No! Why? Because you could see the thing was useless. You could absolutely see there was nothing in it.
Learning to let go and live in the now begins with a person beginning to recognize that something in them is holding onto what it wants to hold onto for its own purposes. And not only is it holding onto all of its dreams and aspirations, it's also holding onto the disappointments, the regrets, the fears -- all of the things that your mind cultivates and collects on a day-to-day basis.
Here's a person and they sit, like a miser with gold coins, pouring through what has failed to fulfill them. Can you see it in your mind's eye? It's not pretty, is it? Because the more my so-called gold fails to fulfill me, the more I think I have to have. That's what greed is. Greed is when a person finds out that what they have won't give them the contentment they're looking for. So, the same mind that said fulfillment rested in possessing things then says the answer is to possess more of what didn't fulfill me the first time. And that's why the world staggers the way it does.
Our task is to begin to understand this whole process. If I want to be alive, if I want to have a real life, then I have to be where real life is happening... in the incoming moment.
The incoming moment is the Now - but we're not in relationship with it. We are fully identified, actually "ensnared" is the proper word, by a nature that derives its sense of self by considering its own images. I know who I am by thinking about what I'm doing. I have a value of myself by measuring it according to what I have been told is valuable and whether or not I'm getting close to that. And that's not life.
Think of it. I want you to come wide awake and actually, as best you can understand it, take part in the incoming moment. Feel it. Be aware of it. To be present to the incoming moment simply requires that one let go of being identified with their own thoughts about what just transpired. Because I can't have "what is" if my mind is all the time with "what was." And it is "what is" that changes a human being. Why? Please listen to this: because "what is" is always changing itself. God's life is always perfecting itself. God's life is always enlarging itself. God's life is always clarifying itself. God's life is always helping itself go higher.