The past is memory. The future is imagination. Both take place only as present thoughts. The present moment is not a thin sliver between them; it is the only thing there is. The rest is story playing in it.
Contemplative practice is in large part the slow, patient return of attention to where it already is. Eckhart Tolle made this the explicit frame of his popular teaching. Zen has said it for centuries: the ordinary mind — that is the way.