Time is a curtain, behind which reality hides.

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 present moving past to future. It is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and history.

The reality is that activity and the resulting change turns 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, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.

As energy, this presence goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions, thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past.

Though it is the digestive system processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns.

So the mind is more referee of the emotions, desires, needs bubbling up, than their source. As the point of decision, it might seem source, but it's just lens.

In the West we think of the future as in front and the past behind, because we see ourselves as objects moving through space, while in the East they see the past as in front and the future behind, because the past is known and what is in front is seen, while what is behind and the future are unknown.

So time is like language. It is something we are taught. The reality is not some flow, but the tides turning, the waves cresting, the positive feedback turning negative. It hides the details.