Thanks for stopping by. I am Josh and you're at Darma Punx NYC. Just a couple of announcements.

If you'd like to join us on our three hour gathering in person, May 22nd, Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m.

at Center Yoga in New York, you can find all the info and if you'd like to join us, you can register there,

Darma Punks with an ex-NYC and Labor Day weekend up in the beautiful Garrison Institute overlooking the Hudson

River, easy hour-long direct Metro North train ride from New York to the center itself pretty much.

That's from September 1st to 5th and that in-person event you can also find out more about on our website and if you want you can register at garrisons.

Every morning from Monday through Fridays Kathy leads her morning meditation the daily pause you can find out about that on the website. My work as a teacher, Buddhist counselor, if you'd like to

support it, the Venmo is DarmaPunks with the next NYC and the PayPal buttons on the website.

So that's all the announcements.

Tonight we're talking about the attainment of perhaps the most peaceful, soothing, sustainable, pleasant state of mind.

Why flow is so important, how to attain it, and will then have a

meditation based on early Buddhist instructions,

some of the earliest teachings of the Buddha,

where we'll be practicing getting into a state of flow

in our meditation. You're invited to just relax, settle in and I'm just going to jump in with tonight's topic.

So all of us have what we could call an inner voice, i.e. and thoughts have a common origin when we're very young and we're toddlers, our caretakers, especially starting around the age of two to three start relying more and more on verbal instructions.

And infants repeat aloud those instructions as a way to inhibit their impulses.

So for instance, a parent might say don't run in the hall, don't go outside when nobody's with you.

Don't eat the cookie until after dinner.

Don't hit your sister or brother, don't tug the cat's tail, whatever, the parent might instruct.

And then the infant will, as we learned from the great Russian clinical psychologist, Lev Weygotsky, the child will repeat those instructions aloud as a way to remember and direct their actions so that they don't violate or transgress upon the commands their parents have given them.

So there's a period of time where children just say aloud these self-regulating thoughts, but then over time these instructions allow,

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