Free will is an oxymoron.

If there is no cause, there is no effect and the premise of will is to affect.

Th problem with determinism is that while cause does lead to effect, the act of determination can only occur as the present.

We are mobile organisms, so this sentient interface our body has with its environment functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so we model time as the present moving past to future, but the reality is that change is turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no 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 this presence, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

So the energy, as presence, goes past to future, because the patterns it's generating form and dissolve, future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Although it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information. Motor and steering.

So consciousness, like energy, is causal, even if the patterns giving it definition are effect.

As time is emergent from this dynamic feedback loop between energy and form, the linear narrative is little more than a one dimensional map of the multi dimensional, thermodynamic cycles, expanding and coalescing, that give it power and structure.

Ask the trees what time is and they will tell you it's seasons.

Even galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. Harmonization versus synchronization.