You will be tempted to file this chapter under poetry. Resist once, and look: which sentence, exactly, was the metaphor? It was description, as plain as I could make it, of what you have called “I” since before your name — examined at last instead of assumed. The dream was a case of mistaken identity, nothing more. You took yourself to be one of the characters. You are what the whole story is appearing in — and the story is not over; it goes on, with this one difference: it can now be lived instead of survived.
What that difference does to a Tuesday — to dishes, to grief, to love, to dying — is the rest of this book. First, though, we must turn and look outward, at the world the dream told you was “everything else.” It is not what you were told either.
Anytime — waiting for the kettle, stopped at a light — ask silently: am I aware? Catch the yes that is already there before thought arrives, and rest in it for one breath. That is the whole practice. It will feel like nothing at first. It is the most ancient thing you will ever touch, and it is touching you back.