It's not apart from the exterior world. It is interconnected. It is the subjective in relation to the objective. The subjective and the objective are in reality not two separate realities, but they are connected, like the left side of the brain and the right side. In reality, these are simply domains of influence and we simply speak of them as separate things, but they are not.
When you sit on a beach and experience the setting sun, both the subjective and the objective are creating a single reality that you experience as a living being, both spiritual and physical.
We speak of things like body and mind in the West as if they are separate things due to the influence of Platonic dualism. In reality they are not. Buddhists for instance don't see body and mind as separate, but as bodymind, a single thing.
We create models of reality using terms which seem to separate body from mind, or spirit, but this ultimately is only for the purpose to discuss the differences as domains of influence. They are, despite our separating them with our language, interpenetrating domains. They are not separate.
Engaging in dialogues with your own thoughts is not what is meant by looking within. That's just the normal chatter of the mind which looking within is intended to be able to move beyond into the deeper reaches of the interior spaces of the "bodymind". Looking within is what the practice of meditation attempts to do, quieting the discursive mind and all its cognitions, to find a place of "no-mind" or stillness where you are just the silent observer.
Once we move beyond judgements of this and that, dividing and separating reality out into chunks of reality, drawing boxes around objects and creating separate realities for them with our minds (which is exactly what we do), then you enter a place of silent Awareness. Entering into that interior space opens us to an experience of life that is deeper, richer, and fuller than the normal chattering discursive mind. And that deeper, richer, and fuller experience of reality, being beyond the constrictions of the discursive mind, is what we term as a spiritual experience of reality.
The world "spiritual" is used, because it is not confined to a box. It permeates all domains, like the wetness of the water is the same regardless of the shape and size of the waves. It binds them all together. A spiritual life, is a connected life, connected to everything as a living breathing whole.
And, any information you perceive about the material world is influenced, shaped, and created by the thinking mind. What we see in the world, is not just a direct window into reality with our set of eyes, or filters we use being set aside. That is impossible. That is the fallacy of logical positivism.
The reason for looking within, exploring the interior reality of the mind and spirit through dismantling those structures of the mind created through language and culture which deterministically set the boundaries around what can and cannot be seen or understood, is to awaken to the fallacy of the mind's ideas about itself and reality, as actual reality. It adds a layer of perspective that the thinking, reasoning mind is not capable of seeing beyond itself. Without that perspective, what the mind sees is simply an image of itself reflected back to itself.
Those are just metaphors to describe different domains of influence for the sake of using some language in order for the mind to attempt to discuss and understand things in the way that is only capable of thinking, in terms of separation. That is true for every single thing we think about. We separate everything through language, drawing boundaries around things, which in reality are not separate.
The first key is to recognize how language does this. The second key is to see with another set of eyes that does not do this. And that comes, and is developed by "looking within".
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