Stories that are spiritualizing but don’t look “spiritual”: Part 2

Pattern-appropriate themes for directional spirituality

Apr 12, 2025

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All of Deus in Fabula, “A quest for spiritual, devotional, and mystical realism in fiction,” is founded, as described in Mystical realism: motivations, inspirations, and opportunities, on the question of whether there’s really a market for “simple devotional stories that inspire people to seek God.” Taken at face value, the phrase describes stories that are primarily suited for the self-transcender (as defined in Everyone is seeking God but most don’t know it). Yet the directional spirituality discussed in Part 1 of this series suggests that it’s possible to write stories for the other patterns that, although they might not be explicitly spiritual, devotional, or mystical, might at least inspire readers towards that eventual goal. That’s what we’ll explore here.

person walking on arrow street sign — Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Trying to write “a story for everyone” isn’t practical

Within the general framework of directional spirituality (see Part 1), it should be obvious that what appeals to people within one pattern of behavior—be it self-comforter, self-server, self-sacrificer, or self-transcender—will often not appeal to those in the other patterns. The kinds of stories and themes that motivate or inspire people in one pattern may not—and probably won’t—inspire those in different patterns.

Consider, for example, a story meant to inspire a self-comforter/sensualist to rise from lethargy, sloth, and addiction to the level of a self-server by glorifying a protagonist’s heroic journey to hard work and self-sufficiency. The story could even do so to the point of callousness because caring about only oneself is yet a step up, spiritually speaking, from not caring about anyone or anything.

With that emphasis on pure self-interest, however, the story would not appeal to readers higher up in the self-server pattern, let alone those in the self-sacrificer or self-transcender patterns. For those readers, in fact, the very glorification of self-interest, which is heroic for the self-comforter, makes the story anti-heroic and thus spiritually degrading.

On the flip side, a story intended to inspire a self-sacrificer to rise to the level of a self-transcender through devotion and mystical experience won’t have much appeal to either self-servers or self-comforters because they simply won’t be able to relate to it from their present level of consciousness.

This is not to say that people in all these patterns don’t have some kind of relationship to God. Many do. But, as we’ll explore in later posts, I think people generally treat this relationship according to the goals of their pattern: someone in the self-server pattern, for example, will likely relate to God as a power to help them achieve greater personal success but not as a Supreme Spirit into which they seek to offer themselves fully, as the self-transcender does.

The same can be said to some degree of self-sacrificers, especially those whose personal philosophy aligns with secular humanism. They might call themselves “spiritual but not religious,” as discussed in Genuine spirituality in fiction, part 2, but such a denatured spirituality doesn’t leave much space for (or interest in) stories that involve God or characters who experience God’s presence in a meaningful way.

I see others on social media who are deeply passionate about matters of social, economic, and racial justice, along with issues like climate change, industrialization, and cultural imperialism. But for all their seeming caring and compassion, matters of God and spirituality don’t seem to appear on their radar. In their secular humanism, too, they are often atheistic in their outlook, disposed to reject—quite vociferously at times—anything and everything to do with God, religion, and even non-religious spirituality. The meme graphic with which I started Characters who don’t know how the story will end, part 1 was posted by one such person.

(Substack, though, is home to quite a few people whose social activism blends beautifully with their faith. You can find some of them on my “Reads” list.)

All of this is to say that outright spiritual and devotional stories, especially those with mystical realism as I’m talking about on Deus in Fabula, aren’t necessarily going to attract a large audience among the bulk of the populace, and that includes many outwardly religious people whose choices and priorities yet reflect patterns other than the self-transcender and the higher levels of the self-sacrificer. For this reason, I suspect that there’s a potential audience for stories that begin in a manner that appeals to self-comforters or self-servers and then carry those readers on an upward journey to the higher levels. It might be too much to ask, yet could be worth exploring.

One way or another, though, these varied levels of appeal and relatability is why it doesn’t make sense to try to write a story “for everyone”: the differences of consciousness across the behavioral patterns are simply too pronounced. It’s best, I think, to aspire to write a story with broad appeal within one behavioral pattern or perhaps at the transition between two of them.

Pattern-appropriate themes

We can see these distinctions of consciousness more clearly if we expand the diagram from Part 1 to include the primary concerns of each pattern:

The added words in the middle indicate the domain of concern for the associated pattern: the self-comforter is primarily concerned with the material/sensual domain, the self-server with the psychological, the self-sacrificer with the moral, and the self-transcender with the spiritual.1

Put another way, those who live primarily in one of the four behavioral patterns will, in general, be seeking to fulfill the associated needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Maslow’s designed his hierarchy, too, as a kind of sequence in which different needs are met, with the general idea that it’s difficult to seek higher needs when one is deprived of the lower needs. It’s also a way of saying that even when you’re fulfilling those lower needs there are yet higher needs that the human psyche yet craves, pushing every person toward self-actualization and self-transcendence, as described in Everyone is seeking God but most don’t know it.

The words on the left and right sides indicate the opposite poles of that domain. People in each pattern desire to experience more of what’s on the left side and to avoid what’s on the right side. The self-comforter is primarily occupied with such material and sensual matters. The self-server is more concerned with the health of the mind and not just the body. Indeed, for the self-server, a healthy body isn’t desirable because it feels good, it’s desirable because it enables one to pursue other ambitions.

The self-sacrificer maps to moral concerns of right and wrong, good and evil, and other such distinctions. Self-servers, on the other hand—and we see this with plenty of businesspeople—aren’t particularly concerned with morals. To give a simple but pervasive example, a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is value-neutral measure of economic activity, is interpreted by self-comforters and self-servers as an equivalent measure of quality of life. To them “quality of life” and “money” mean the same thing. Self-sacrificers, on the other hand, point out the GDP’s moral ambivalence: in the eyes of the GDP, hat building bombs, building prisons, and legalizing drugs are just as “good” to building homes, educating children, and treating diseases. They point out, too, that many things that contribute to “quality of life,” in a moral sense, aren’t even counted.

At the top, though, these dualities fade away the more one is connected directly to God, who is beyond duality.

Where fiction is concerned, even a casual survey of what gets published year to year shows that the bulk of stories and novels are concerned with psychological themes and secondarily with material/sensual themes. Even many ostensibly “spiritual” novels are really just psychological or sensual novels with a spiritual veneer (see Part 1).

The reason for this dominance of psychological and material/sensual themes is simple: our culture is largely composed of self-servers and the upper segment of the self-comforters. There are relatively few self-sacrificers and even fewer self-transcenders, and the lower self-comforters likely aren’t interested in reading at all. Without any real backing data, my impression of the relative markets looks something like this:

This reality doesn’t necessarily bode well for deeply mystical stories…but it doesn’t mean that a story can’t point in that direction.

Choosing an audience and speaking to their reality

When we set out to write stories choosing an audience is very much a matter of choosing the thematic domain that’s suited to that audience and creating appropriately relatable characters. But does that mean, if we target, say, the psychological level, that we have to abandon the hope of inspiring people to seek God in some way? If we write a story that speaks to psychological concerns and to that level of reality, does that mean we cannot serve readers spiritually?

a man sitting in the grass reading a book — Photo by Masjid Pogung Dalangan on Unsplash

Not at all: we simply need to rephrase what “seeking God” looks like for the target level, for with directional spirituality the key is to motivate and inspire an upward movement within that level using appropriate concepts. This rephrasing means, in essence, not speaking explicitly of “God” but rather highlighting some aspect or quality of God or divine consciousness related to the next level up, thereby encouraging readers in that upward direction.

Self-comforters can relate to and seek God in terms of greater energy and creativity (core qualities of the self-server).
Self-servers can relate to and seek God in terms of dedication and a greater expansion of sympathies (core qualities of the self-sacrificer).
Self-sacrificers can relate to and seek God in terms of greater self-offering into one’s service without attachment to outcomes (core qualities of the self-transcender; non-attachment here means doing what you feel called to do even despite ongoing “failure” by the measure of the world).
Self-transcenders then seek God directly through self-forgetfulness (transcendence of the ego).

These upward movements again, as described in Part 1, suggest spiritualizing, heroic character arcs in which the protagonist learns and grows and discovers something greater in themselves, which, at the end of the road, is to realize one’s true essence as a child of God. Alternately, readers on these levels can be inspired by tragedies in which relatable character have opportunities to grow in the ways suggested here, and thus realize greater happiness, but they keep blowing their chances and realize only wretchedness. A tragedy inspires an upward movement by a complete negation of the opposite downward movements.

At the same time, a story meant for self-comforters will not bring the same upward inspiration to the self-server. At best it might confirm the self-server’s existing attitudes but won’t inspire them to rise further. The same story, too, by emphasizing self-server attitudes, would be spiritual degrading to self-sacrificers and self-transcenders because it effectively pulls their consciousness downward.

And whether or not “God” is explicitly brought out in stories isn’t particularly important. Demonstrating spiritual qualities at any level at least points toward the highest expressions: a material/sensual person who expresses kindness, compassion, generosity, peacefulness, etc., doesn’t need to be thinking “God’ in the process, but is yet giving expression to divine qualities in what they do. A deeper relationship with the Divine, too, is a natural outgrowth of energy, creativity, expansive sympathies, self-offering, and self-forgetfulness.

Otherwise, to speak explicitly of “seeking God” to a self-comforter, self-server, or even self-sacrificer may encourage a selfish relationship in which one seeks God only for how God can help one fulfill lesser desires. We’ll talk more of this in a later post about the spectrum of relating to God.

A final note

Choosing a target audience also means choosing to engage yourself, as an author, with the associated level of consciousness. You may be inspired to do so out of service to others, but you might just as well want to steer clear. There is no right or wrong here: it’s a personal choice about where you feel drawn to focus your energies. I have a friend, for example, who was once an alcoholic but strives now to live in the self-transcender pattern. Out of deep compassion for those who are going through similar struggles, she continues to serve others through counseling and teaching spiritual practices in 12-step recovery programs. For myself, I relate more easily to those who are driven by hopes of career achievement but yet have inklings of other possibilities. It’s for such people that I wrote (under my given name, Kraig Brockschmidt) my memoir, Mystic Microsoft: A Journey of Transformation in the Halls of High Technology.

Another series of posts, which I plan to publish after an fiction interlude, will explore the transitions between the behavioral patterns in more detail. Until then, and as always, your comments are welcome.