What is meant here by spiritual practice is the cultivation of consciousness. It is any practice that will help us realize the true nature of consciousness. It is also any practice that will allow consciousness to become in a sense stronger, to BE more, to expand, to become brighter and freer of anything that is not itself. This eventually results in what is sometimes called illumination or enlightenment, that is the realization of our true self being consciousness itself, or Soul.
I often repeat that this realization is never easy to achieve. For our difficulty lies in trying our best to live in this world, while not being of this world – a paradox. Some will recognize this last sentence as being a Bible paraphrase. It is, but it must be understood in its esoteric sense, not the typical religious one.
We're trying to live in this world while cultivating an ever-growing awareness of the nature of the consciousness, which is devoid of anything this world contains. We're trying to become more present, efficient, aware, capable individuals, citizens, workers, communicators, thinkers, learners, positive and active participants in the affairs of this world, while keeping our consciousness free from all this. We must function as a body and a psyche (and a personality), while our true nature is none of that. This is the main paradox of spiritual practice. And, solving it is a requirement to our success on the Spiritual Path.
Our consciousness must therefore be aware of itself and of the world, and know the distinction between both. We must have a worldly vehicle (body + psyche) to be present in this world, there is no other way. We must tend to its needs, its growth, its health, while remaining detached from it. We must use it to its fullest, yet remain free from its natural tendencies that all tend to encumber consciousness, to trap consciousness into a state where it no longer knows itself as consciousness. In other words, we must become its master, and not remain its slave.
The paradoxical injunction “be in the world, yet not of the world”, in its esoteric sense has, therefore, nothing to do with anything typically moralistic, like the (false) belief that we should not experience some of the multiple and various possibilities this world has to offer. It has to do with the nature of things, duly understood and realized.