"I have met the devil and he is me..."

Jesus was tempted "in every way" that we are - including the ego. What was he asked during the temptation? Was he not asked things that are egoist? The answer is of course, yes. In the Garden of Gethsemane he declared, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will" thereby giving us a clue of the internal struggle within himself. 

Yes, the serpent in the Garden is the egoist aspect within all me and cursed we are eating the dust of our mortal condition... continually.

I served as an exorcist for 10 years and cast more demons out of people than I can count. We saw incredible miracles. But Jesus said this: If I by the finger of God cast our demons then surely the kingdom is at hand." That tells me that demons have no place in the age to come or kingdom if you will. They are a non issue. They ceased to manifest around me when my consciousness shifted and I realized that all things are happening externally until we lift our eyes and see that the grand story is the internal workings of the human being, endowed with the spark or seed of the Divine.

"I have met the devil and he is me." I used to scoff at this statement because of all of the proof that I wielded through my vast experience. It is a leap in consciousness to perceive all as metaphor but even the scriptures say that "these things happened to them as allegory FOR YOU upon whom the end of the age has come." Surely the end of the age of perceiving external devils and gods has come. Christ in you, bro. He, the anointed one, is you. The human being has been impregnated with the Divine, the corporate Mary that has been overshadowed is the human race. We alone bear the Christ within and will bring this babe to birth albeit at the precarious mouth of the dragon, or unbelieving mankind. 

Jesus appeared on the earth to show us the path of transcendence our egoist condition. It is the ego that perceives similarities and differences, light and dark, right and wrong, good and evil. When we partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...., there is. This world is perpetuated by such comparisons. The refusal to believe in our divine identity is a display of the belief in duality. We are not, and never have been separated from the Divine, only in consciousness is there perceived separation and shame.