Your selfless self has always been at the center of your existence since you can remember.
Your selfless self is the one that does the experiencing, and the decision making. And that's all you really need at this point, especially when you're older.
So decide what you wish to experience next, and decide to experience it. That's it!
Strip everything away and let go by taking everything you've been framing as internal and reframing it as external. It's a huge moving out party. Throw that sofa out on the lawn. Empty your apartment so you can identify everything people threw in there, and what it is you actually miss.
You might have to quit your job, get a divorce, or disown your father to get there. But you can't give anyone a second chance unless you accept they've stolen from you once. This includes your ego.
But this cannot include your selfless self because it cannot take from you. It only takes on behalf of the needy to serve them and waits for new requests.
Your head will tell you if it aches. Your body will tell you it's tired. Your ego will tell you if it has issues with the other egos in the room. So take asprin, get some good sleep, and rethink your relationships.
These are not problems. They're just tasks. Some are harder to solve than others, but you have a brain, and google and books where every solution has been shared at least once. And it's always your selfless self that goes to work and does everything for you. Your ego never solved anything.
So once you've emptied your cup and are in a good mood, ask for your next experience. Make a wish. And go do it treating it as the most important event in the world because it is. It's your truth.
At which point, what do you need your ego for?
If it's what got you here, then it's job is done.
And you may even wish to experience giving someone a second chance.
> 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.
You need to realize why the question was asked in the first place and how stuck he feels. Existential crises result from our belief in our ability to change confronted with our inability to do so. But I'm saying it's not that you suck at it or that you suck. It simply is the wrong approach. There is no you to suck in the first place. I'm not saying there is no you either. I'm saying, don't look at you that way.
> You can't change others, you can influence them
This is the error. Trying to change yourself is like trying to change your manager. All you can do is influence yourself, and you know this. You talk to yourself but you don't listen. Hence you struggle. We all do.
That's because there are two you's within you. One that listens and speaks, and the other that wants to feel acknowledged and valued and changed. The latter is your ego. You are not your ego. You are the one that listens and speaks. You are the one that influences and feeds your ego. But you are not your ego.
The moment you externalize your ego, it becomes just another problem you can solve, because we are great at solving external problems.
> often easier than deep internal change
Ya, so just forget about this deep part. It will solve itself if you get on with your life.
Even you make this distinction between knowledge and skills and this deeper thing. Skills and knowledge and philosophy can all be thought of as external. Deliberatly internal change is always a deadend. Most of the time it's just your ego thanking you for feeding it.
> Can you learn to use more positive self-talk (CBT)? Can you learn to get better at pausing between feeling an emotion and responding to that emotion to exercise self-regulation?
Words with self- feed the ego. Instead, simply say: Think more positively. Take a moment before you act.
If you self-ragulate, and fail to regulate, you're left wondering about self. If you fail to take a moment before you act, you're left just wondering why you failed to take a moment before you acted.
The difference may be subtle but it's precisely how you avoid an existential crisis.
No. The result is the same, which I admit is confusing.
You should notice by the end that the two you's are different, and they are two distinctly different ways of modeling the world.
The deeper question is, what is change? And, what are you?
The first "you" is ego-centric. It's "what's wrong with me me me, I can change me me me". But that would never lead to the solution which is simply to remove "me" from the problem and just listing all the problems in your life. You wouldn't describe that as "you are in control, you can change". You would't seek self-help or self-motivation or self-worth. You would simply describe that as "I solved my problems, maybe I can help you with yours".
You don't have to change, because you are not your problems. This self-this self-that thinking is a deadend. That's the point.
"I must change" is the goal most start with. Changing everything else in your life is how you arrive at achieving it. "I" never had to change. "I" self adjusts as the result of everything near it. But "I" has power over everything near it.
That's the paradox of the selfless sovereign individual. In contrast, the selfish sovereign individual makes the most sense to most people in western society, which accounts for where we are.
Your selfless self is the one that does the experiencing, and the decision making. And that's all you really need at this point, especially when you're older.
So decide what you wish to experience next, and decide to experience it. That's it!
Strip everything away and let go by taking everything you've been framing as internal and reframing it as external. It's a huge moving out party. Throw that sofa out on the lawn. Empty your apartment so you can identify everything people threw in there, and what it is you actually miss.
You might have to quit your job, get a divorce, or disown your father to get there. But you can't give anyone a second chance unless you accept they've stolen from you once. This includes your ego.
But this cannot include your selfless self because it cannot take from you. It only takes on behalf of the needy to serve them and waits for new requests.
Your head will tell you if it aches. Your body will tell you it's tired. Your ego will tell you if it has issues with the other egos in the room. So take asprin, get some good sleep, and rethink your relationships.
These are not problems. They're just tasks. Some are harder to solve than others, but you have a brain, and google and books where every solution has been shared at least once. And it's always your selfless self that goes to work and does everything for you. Your ego never solved anything.
So once you've emptied your cup and are in a good mood, ask for your next experience. Make a wish. And go do it treating it as the most important event in the world because it is. It's your truth.
At which point, what do you need your ego for?
If it's what got you here, then it's job is done.
And you may even wish to experience giving someone a second chance.