Whoever 'they' are for you, they can never take your spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline).
They can never steal your inner peace.
Nobody can. Nothing external can. Nothing outer can. No amount of outer dispeace can.
These are things you can only give away voluntarily. In that way, you can never really give them away, you can only engage in the dishonest self-delusion that is spiritual slavery and spiritual imprisonment. In that case, the spiritual devils and cage is in your imagination, but a nightmare doesn't need to be real to torment you just the same. Indeed, even the fact that you are the creator--the god--of the nightmare and are your own worst tormentor does not make the torment any less tormenting. That kind of deep spiritual torment is only something one can do to themselves. If you are ever experiencing that kind of deep spiritual ongoing torment, then it is always the case that is you and only you that is doing it to you.
The only true possession is self-possession and to realize it and manifest that fact is freedom, true spiritual freedom. It's the one true possession because it's the only possession that cannot be stripped from you.
Of all other possessions, it can be rightly said that what you own really owns you. the more Possessiveness itself towards any such things--be they real things or imaginary things--is the quintessential form of spiritual slavery. When you think of yourself as owner of anything but yourself--your true self, your spiritual freedom, and the free-spirited inner peace that is 100% control- then you are not really the owner but the owned. Then you are not the master but the slave. Moreover, not only can such possessions be stripped from you, but they always inevitably will. Conflate the mortal and temporary with the eternal and constant and you will suffer. Seek to own or pretend to own anything but the one thing you do own and you will suffer. Thus, possessiveness is slavery, and the more you possessively cling to pseudo-possessions, meaning anything outer or temporary, including comfort itself, the more you are a slave, a spiritual slave spiritually imprisoned in your own made-up nightmare and spiritually enslaved and tormented by imaginary devils you secretly control.
One of my favorite books is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor. What he calls "the last of human freedoms" is something I would call "the only true freedom", but regardless he says it better than I ever could:
"Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: The last of the human freedoms-- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity."
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program, both for the free option and the paid option.
