Rainn Wilson

Anyways, Abdul Baha about a hundred years ago came to the United States and a reporter wanted to interview this famous prophet and was like,

hey, do Baha'is believe in Satan?

And Abdu'l-Baha said, yes, we do.

Satan is the insistent self.

And I just love that.

So as opposed to like a red guy with a pitchfork who's underneath the ground, like whispering in your ears and causing you temptation and he's like the forces of darkness, he's got his demon army or whatever.

Like,

it's in here.

It's in here.

The insistent self.

What does that mean?

Well, it's the ego, you know?

So, and that goes back again to Buddhist thought.

It goes back to the most ancient spiritual writings in the world, the Vedas and Upanishads and the Vedantic practice and Tibetan Buddhism, where your struggle is the ego, right?

And in Islam, jihad is

The greater jihad is the struggle within yourself.

The lesser jihad is like, if there's enemies that are attacking you, you fight those enemies.

But the jihad that everyone is fighting is that struggle within ourselves against our own ego.

So this idea of struggling against, because the ego, what does the ego get?

And again, ego's tough because we want a healthy self-esteem.