Did you mean Dennett, instead of Chalmers? I agree that the Dennett's conclusions seems to be false almost on a logical level. The self is an illusion for sure, the consciousness for sure isn't (EDIT: not saying here that there exists 'pure consciousness without content').
> Don't just read about it. Go ahead and have the experience yourself. It changes a lot of perspectives. You don't even have to go all the way to the highest levels described in the literature - the intermediate stuff is revelatory enough already.
It is indeed. The more you meditate, the more you see that most of the things that you do 'outside' are meaningless, just playing with your representations of the world and pretending they are real. Of course we can't do anything to somehow reach the 'real' world, but at least we can drop the pretending part.
The title of this book may seem both scary and beautiful in this regard: http://www.buddha-heute.de/downloads/treeriver.pdf Not sure I'd recommend it for beginners, but I just love the title.