The sense that your actions leave you answerable and hence are not limited to the occasion of their performance, that they carry involve burden of guilt, karma or sin or its lifting, is definitive for the existence of a self extended in time. But not every action, only those which are 'free' expressions of your nature or essence, a nature which is also forged in the same fire. And this marks or makes the distinction between imagination and reality, a distinction endlessly reflected in your dreams.