The present is formed in response to both the past and future

Lazaris has said that we create the present by choosing a future and laying it against the backdrop of the past.  Here's how Seth describes this function:

“When you look at world events, however, the present world situation for example (the war between Iraq and Iran, which began a few days ago,) try to enlarge the scope of your intellectual reach, so that you consider world events as living multidimensional “novels” being formed in the present in response to both future and past triggers.  The impact of the future on the past, in your terms – or rather, the implications of the future on the present – are highly important, and such precognitive reactions are as vital, numerous, and real as you ordinarily think that the reactions to past events are.

“This puts present world events in an entirely different perspective.  Men act, then, in relationship to events that have, historically speaking, not yet occurred – but those events happening, say, in the future, in certain terms cast their shadows back into the present, or illuminate the past according to the event’s characteristics.  There is always more going on than ordinary sense data show.”

(The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About The Art Of Creative Living, Session Thirteen)