"The ego," he told me

"we deal with diplomatically. It wants whatever it wants, with or
without the Sacred Law: it doesn't care. So we give it what it wants
within the bounds of the Sacred Law, and exact from it what we want:
that it serves us, that it rises at night to pray, that it fulfill our
duties. This is our diplomacy with the ego."

-Sheikh 'Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghouri as quoted in Sea Without Shore: A
Manual of the Sufi Path by Sheikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, pg. 17.