We model time backward.
As these mobile, intentional/conscious creatures, we experience our reality as a sequence of perceptions, then as human society, narrate our sequential streams of consciousness to one another, so we experience time as the point of the present, moving past to future.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Potential, actual, residual. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no literal “dimension” of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform and drive it. Aka, causality and conservation of energy.
The energy, being “conserved,” is always and only present. Being dynamic, it changes form. This is time. As such, it is an effect of this activity, like temperature, pressure and color. Frequencies and amplitudes.
So the process goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past. Or lives go birth to death, while the process of life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
I wrote an essay, expanding on this, which does delve into the mechanics of thought, as well as society, economics, etc;
