> If it’s not there - who is suffering, experiencing problems?
It's void in the sense that it's a black hole and a black box. You feed it, and it all disappears into a void. Your ego will then ask you to do things to feed it more, but nothing good comes of this. You are simply ego-driven. And in an ego-embodying state, when your ego fails, you fail. Crisis. This crisis is the worst when you cause it. When you realize your ego is an idiot, but still equate it with you, "you" becomes a paradox.
> 2. Who is “I” if not the sum of all parts working together?
Right. But you're your hand, but your hand is external to the one doing the feeling, thinking, and controlling. You can exist without it. Repeat for every part. Headaches may be the most telling. Literally, your head is hurting. Yet, we swallow a pill and get on with our lives.
Once you strip everything away, you're left with an observer that can feel and talk and decide. A stripped consciousness. At this level we may truly all be the same. It is at this level that we must connect.
Of course, ego-embodying people connect with their egos. This explains most of the people I've met in the last 20 years through work in Los Angeles. Once you're not an ego booster to them, the relationship is over. But they all use ego-boosting to make relationships and sustain them. They believe that's how they'll make it, when all it is is their ego thirsty for attention and money.
Well, the one doing the ego-boosting, the one deciding to do it, and the one okay with it, is the selfless you that can do, decide, and not be okay with the opposite.
> that your model isn’t just a play of words
It's all words. Or at least, every version of the world exposes itself as (a play of) words.
When I see someone reasoning with self- words, I see them playing with fire, and I can easily fix their expressions to be less egocentric. Usually it makes them feel better too. It's semantic surgery and semantic therapy. You hear a pessimist and if you're an optimist, you know right away how unnecessary some of their framing of the world can be. It's all in our words.
> what difference does it make - how we split the cake and how we call our different parts
We can split it however we see fit, but it makes all the difference. If you identify with your ego, you'll live one way. If you identify your ego as a needy pesky pet that lives in your mind that requires occassional feeding, you'll live another way.
The ego serves a purpose. It can make you feel really really good. It's tenticales stretch into our nervous system. It rewards us for our successes and punishes us for our failures. Or at least tries to. Kids are all one with their egos. It's with maturity that we learn detachement and transcendence. That's when we stop taking everything so personally and decide it's not okay to let our ego do the driving. But when you have the entire western culture obsessed with individualism, too many of us have become intellectually engrossed in ego-driven self-worship. We then attach our egos to group identities and go to war with them. To facebook and twitter.
And that needs to be called out for exactly what it is: Immature.