Glenn,

Maybe the real problem is that energy is distinct from the information it expresses.

Consider that as mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the point of the present moving past to future. Yet the evident reality is that activity and the resulting 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, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated coalesce and dissolve, future to past. Energy drives the wave, 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. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy, the nervous system sorting the information and the circulation system as feedback between them.

So the intellect tends to focus on the information, because that's it's function. Even if the reality is the gut decides, while the head advises.

Galaxies are also energy radiating out, toward infinity, as structure coalesces in, toward equilibrium. Both entropic.

Harmonization versus synchronization. Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.