The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and welcome to the fifth talk on the ten reflections for a spiritual life. These 10 reflections, these 10 themes are also orientations or

orientations or the concerns that are activated or present as we offer spiritual care to others.

People offer spiritual caregivers

might be listening for these themes in people's lives

and seeing which one of those is challenging for people at any given time and

challenging means that it could be the major challenge of their life that something really has ruptured or been taken away or there's a loss or

and then in offering spiritual care is to take it to recognize this and support people.

Sometimes people don't have been recognized, they know they're suffering, but they don't know

why.

And somehow in the conversation out, that somehow it can come out,

that this is where it is.

It's, there's what needs to be somehow addressed is the issues of meaning.

The framing of our experience in that is most important for us or framing it in a way that

brings forth our vitality or inspiration.

What may be our vitality or inspiration. What maybe is lacking a sense of direction or a sense of purpose. What's lacking is a sense of agency, the ability to do and engage with what's important, or what's lacking is a sense of

autonomy, a sense that we're capable as an individual to stand up for ourselves or take care of ourselves or engage

with as an independent person with what seems important for us.

So today's topic is identity,

and that's one that there's a lot of struggles with that people have.

And there are what some people have called identity wars going on in the United States

and maybe other places in the world as well

...