We always seek the literal first, that is, what the author had in mind when he wrote it. The literal sense can also have metaphors in it, such as the right arm of God, the right arm is a metaphor indicating power, but you take it literally as power, not allegorical. The book of Revelation has lots of symbolic language, but that too should be approached literally first. Not that you take names like “dragon” to be a fire breathing dragon, but it is talking about a specific creature, Satan. Taking the Bible literally is not taking metaphors and symbolic language literal, but recognizing that it does have a specific meaning and talking about something or someone literally, not generalizations. Metphors are used in the Bible to tell us things literally, but due to those things being beyond our comprehension to grasp it, God used metaphors to allow us to get some kind of grasp on it. One way to unerstand the meaning of metaphors or symbolic language is to interpret in the light of the rest of Scripture, meaning that other parts of Scripture will clarify it. Another way is how the teaching office of the Church has understood it through Tradition.
As for the spiritual sense, that can be broken down into different groups, such as allegorical, life application/moral, anagogical. Allegorical is things that are types of something else, such as Israel being an OT type of the Church. The moral sense is taking a passage of Scripture and applying it to your life. Anagogical is things that are types of future heavenly glory. Those are the sense that are taught in the Catechism, but there are a few others that can also be applied, but I would learn the ones above first.
