When I understand that the ego, the self, is nothing but a character in a story, and that all stories are made up by me, and that a self that emerges from a story goes to work proving the truth of its story to preserve its existence, then I can write new stories, with new selves, just for the fun of it. And those stories will be just as “real” as any other story I’ve ever identified with.
The difference is that I can never again believe that my stories are objective reality and so, when I find that they could stand to be re-written or abandoned altogether, I can re-write them or abandon them at will.
With practice, I get better and better at writing stories that bring peace and love and end suffering. And I get clearer and clearer about the fact that there is no such thing as a true story, just stories that seem to hurt and stories that don’t.