"So, you don't believe there's a devil?" my mom asked.

"No," I responded, "and you?"

"Yes," she said.

"Really?" I asked. "What do you mean by that? Do you believe there's an actual being called the devil?"

"Of course not," she said. "I just think there is evil in the world; people do bad things."

“Do you also believe that God is omnipotent?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“But how can you say there's a God that is all-powerful, Almighty,” I said, “and then there's another evil power, the devil, which overpowers God. That’s contradictory.”

The devil referred to by my mom is a metaphor for evil, for temptation. And it doesn’t come from an outside thing, it is within us all. They are the lower attributes of your instinctive mind, urges that you have outgrown.

“People attribute to God all the manifestations of power that are pleasing to them, but when it comes to a manifestation of power that hurts them, or seems cruel,” Yogi Ramacharaka writes, “they are afraid to attribute it to God, and attribute it to some other power, the devil for instance.”

Every manifestation of power in the universe comes from the same being, from The Absolute, from that. It is possessed of all the power there is, all the power we are conscious of, good and bad, pleasant or unpleasant. There is no room for any other power. That’s what omnipotent means.

You can either be guided by higher or nobler thoughts and do good things, or you can succumb to temptation and do things that hurt you and other people.

Recognize the power within yourself to overcome temptation, to rise above your lower instincts. Conquer the metaphorical devil, and be a force of good.