I think the problem is how we conceive and model time.

As mobile organisms, our sentience coalesces as a sequence of perceptions, as an interface between our body and world, so our sense of time is as the point of the present moving past to future. Given this narrative flow appears to be physically causal, the assumption is as an unbroken sequence of events, throughout all time.

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.

Therefore the future isn't determined, because the act of determination can only occur as the present.

Energy is conserved, because it is the present. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

As process and present, energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go 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. Though it's the digestive respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the central nervous system sorts the information. Signals from the noise.

Considering that energy is the driving factor and consciousness would seem to manifest as a form of energy, it would seem our will, the ability to affect, is integral to our awareness, even if it's often confused and poorly informed.

Though not exactly "free," as in lacking motivating factors, since a will free of cause would be equally free of effect and the premise of will is to affect.

We are a small part of nature's process of selection.

The anarchies of desire, versus the tyrannies of judgment. Heart and head.