What is story and what is actual?

Referring back to the Predictive Brain story, what was actual was the seeing of colors that stimulated the brain to produce the tree image, and the image itself. (notice i’m not saying that the tree itself is actual)

Now we will go deeper and investigate what a story is, and we look at what being actual really is. (from the perspective of the organism)

At a gross level, if we ask what a story is, we get something like “It’s a narrative” or “it’s a thought stream”.

If we look a little deeper, we see that the narrative or thought stream is about a subject.
One step further back (even deeper) and we see that these (stories) not only have a subject, but the subjects can be categorised by nature. By flavor.
..and deeper still, we see that the prevailing nature is habitual.
Now, what is it to be actual?
At the grossest level, we might say that to be actual means that something exists.
Drop a level and we ask how do we know that something exists?
We test it by seeing or touching or using any of our sense organs.
So, let’s get this straight. You test it by believing the interpretation of a perspective arrived at by your brain?
Deeper. OK, yes, I have a story that tells me that something is actual.
Hmmm…