Satan is in you represent the Ego
God in you represent your virtue/goodness
What do you think? Is both satan and God in you at the same time, asking you to choose the Ego or virtue to follow?
He continue (in my translations of his words) to say, to remove ego from your being is to remove satan from within.
When you have fully remove ego, all that regain is virtue/god.
Any thoughts?
I wish to tread lightly in my thoughts here, as often times how people use the term "ego" gets used (or misused) in a variety of ways.
First, the ego is the sense of the separate self. It is the "I" that is distinct from the other, or "you". It's part of natural, normal, and
healthy development of the individual so they can function as a person in the world, interacting in societies. You cannot, "get rid of the ego", anymore than you can get rid of your body and remain a functioning human being. You can however train or "house break" it so it doesn't dominate your life and block you from higher spiritual realizations.
This sense of "ego" is how it is understood in psychology and human development. Refer to Jane Lovenigners work on ego development, as well as that of others to understand this as a normal, functional part of being a human being:
Loevinger's stages of ego development - Wikipedia.
Loevinger describes the ego as a process, rather than a thing;
[6] it is the frame of reference (or lens) one uses to construct and interpret one's world.
[6] This contains impulse control and character development with interpersonal relations and cognitive preoccupations, including
self-concept.
....
Loevinger proposed eight or nine stages of ego in development,
[11] six of which occur in adulthood: conformist, conscientious-conformist, conscientious, individualistic, autonomous, and integrated. She believed that most adults were at the conscientious-conformist level.
Now to the point raised about the Efendi's comments about "getting rid of the ego". This type of language is also heard in a lot of Eastern traditions as well. But what is really meant here? From a spiritual perspective, yes you do not want the ego, or the "separate self" and all that that entails to dominante you as your basic center of gravity.
You want to be able to move or grow beyond all of that and its natural impulses. You want to be able to
transcend the ego. This is very true, and good, and healthy.
What "getting rid of the ego" really means, in both my own experience and understandings, is really more about the driving force that motivates that separate egoic self. Even the goal of "getting rid of the ego", can most easily become a snare that the ego feeds itself upon. "I" will overcome "me". It's like the oroborus, the snake that eats its own tail.
IMHO, the best approach is rather to accept the fact that you have an ego, and will always have an ego, just as you have eyes, ears, hair, limbs, a brain, and a body. It is human to have that separate self. It is essential in order to function. BUT, there is higher-order living as a human, as a spiritual human being, than just those lower-order needs of the body. The spiritual aspirant needs to not let those be the center of gravity, whose impulse dictate and drive everything else. For instance, the "ego" gets angry, "You can't say that to me!!!", as it tries to defend and protect itself.
If that is where you live at, running those programs, responding to those impulses, that can be detrimental to your spiritual aspirations to see and experience more than just the body and its needs (of which the ego is part of). That is "the devil" in the sense that it's impulses are powerful, and self-defeating.
To give a quote from the Apostle Paul,
"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me."
That's what it means to fall back into those habitual responses, rather than transcending them. He calls it "sin", and while it is relatively speaking when when your goal is spiritual liberation, it is really more just the lower-order impulses of the body. He is speaking of this paradoxical co-existence of both the higher-order and lower-order "self" in his body; the spiritual Will, and the animal body.
In short, if you hear someone speak of the ego as "the devil" or "sin", understand that in relative terms, not absolute terms. To "hate" your own flesh, is not spiritual either. To hate your ego, is in fact the ego itself. And that will do harm, not good on a spiritual path. This is my experience speaking as well.