Consider that as mobile organisms, our experience of reality is as a sequence of perceptions, logically necessary to navigate. Consequentually we think of time as the point of the present, going past to future.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests the present, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color, sounds. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
Sequence isn't causal, energy transformation is. Yesterday doesn't cause today, the sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights.
So the energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, as the fluctuations rise and fall.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.
Lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Consciousness goes past to future, while perceptions, emotions and thoughts rise and fall, future to past.
Which means consciousness acts like an energy, always pushing and probing, even its own delineations. Though it is the digestive and circulation systems processing our individual energy, feeding the flame, while the brain sorts and orders the patterns and information. Motor and steering.
Consequently the act of determination can only occur as the present. Future events cannot be fully calculated/processed, until they occur.
Meanwhile the consciousness acts as a minute part of the energy driving this process.
Though free will is also an oxymoron, as an action free of cause would be equally free of effect and the premise of will is to affect. We are part of nature's process of selection.
Yes, the conscious thought process is not in complete control of our motor responses, as they would be too slow, given all the mental clutter. We are not flies. The purpose of the consciousness is to sort and process information, so that future actions are better informed.
