Are you ready to meditate with Kori?
Get all comfortable and warm in your bed.
Make sure that everything is just right in your room.
The lights are just right.
You're wearing your comfortable pajamas.
And you're ready to allow your body to relax.
Maybe even fall fast asleep.
Casey was laid in his bed relaxing his body.
He turned on his cowboy light lamp.
The one that had the shade that had cowboys riding horses cut out of it.
When the light shone through the shade,
It made shadows on the walls in his bedroom.
And because the light spun around,
It looked as if cowboys were riding horses in circles around his room.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply three times.
This was the way that Casey visited his past life as a cowboy.
The light,
The breathing,
The shadows on the wall all somehow magically took him into a place in his mind that connected to his past.
And every time he did this,
He changed.
He would find himself in a past life as Casey,
The cowboy.
Casey the cowboy was older than him.
He owned a ranch.
He took care of animals on the farm.
He was the boss of all the people that worked there on the ranch.
But most of all,
He had his very special horse.
The one he would ride all the time.
She was called Meadow.
She was beautiful.
Casey,
Who was 10 in his real normal life,
Always looked forward to going riding on Meadow.
It was something he always wanted to do when he got there,
When he traveled into his past in his mind.
His time wasn't any different from all the other times.
When he landed on the ranch in his mind,
When his body had fully relaxed after taking three deep breaths,
The first thing he noticed was the snow.
Everything was white.
The barn,
The building,
The house,
All of the floors,
The fields,
The trees.
Everything was covered in a big white blanket of snow.
It was cold.
Casey,
In his 10 year old body,
Had never experienced anything this cold.
He lived in California.
And where he lived,
It definitely didn't snow.
But here,
In his past,
In this cowboy lifetime,
It was snowing.
And it was freezing cold.
He instantly felt how cold his nose felt.
And as he took a big deep breath out,
His breath seemed to freeze around him in the air in front of his face.
It was like a big,
Thick fog.
His ears were cold.
His eyes felt cold.
He'd never felt ice feeling cold like this.
He looked down at his body.
He had a big sheepskin jacket on,
Big sheepskin mitten gloves,
Thick canvas trousers,
Boots.
And yet he was still freezing.
He was walking on meadow through one of the fields,
Checking on the cattle.
The cattle,
As you would think,
Was all huddled together.
They weren't running around trying to get somewhere else,
Bouncing in the summer grasses.
They were all huddled together,
As if trying to get warm off each other.
Casey was taking his time counting the cattle,
Making sure that they were all spoken for.
The sun had already gone down.
It was his favorite part of the day.
To him,
When the sun went down,
It felt like all the world started to prepare to go to sleep.
The sky's color changed.
It went from a bright blue,
Crisp sky with a yellow haze from the sun to an orangey sky and then it changed into a gray,
Blue,
Dark looking sky that seemed to come over the ranch and all of the land very quickly.
It made him feel as if the sky was like a blanket,
Changing color constantly.
He closed his eyes and took a big,
Deep breath and then when he opened his eyes he breathed out and watched his breath,
Freezing tiny little particles in front of his face.
It was so quiet.
The snow on the ground and on all the buildings and the trees seemed to muffle any sounds that you would normally hear.
It was like all the birds had gone to sleep.
All the critters that normally ran around were hibernating or sleeping.
The snow brought a sense of loneliness.
He felt completely alone even though there was so much cattle around him.
Everything was so still and peaceful and quiet.
It didn't take very long before the sky was full of stars and the moon was a full moon on this night.
It was low in the sky and very bright and because the sky was so clear and the snow on the ground somehow,
Someway made everything crystal clear in the sky.
Casey looked closely at the moon and it had a bunny rabbit on it.
He could make out its ears,
Its body,
Its big bunny rabbit thumb per feet.
He'd never noticed that before.
He'd never noticed that there was a bunny rabbit in the moon and because he felt so lonely he started to have a chat with it.
How long have you been there?
He said.
Just hanging out on the moon.
He pretended that the bunny rabbit was answering him back.
Oh,
Just a few billion trillion years.
Nice,
Said Casey.
About you have a few stories to tell,
Casey said to the bunny.
Being all the way up there,
Seeing everything down below all the time.
It's like sitting on the back row at the movies and seeing everyone in front of you,
Being able to watch everything.
Can you see everything from up there,
Bunny?
The bunny said,
Oh yes,
I don't miss a thing.
Casey replied and said,
Did you see that time?
I stole the extra sausage when no one was looking.
I was really hungry that day.
I'm sorry about that.
The bunny rabbit laughed.
Oh,
I see everything.
You stealing a sausage is the least of what I would call a problem.
This got Casey wondering.
How much the moon actually does see at night.
It made him think about how big the world was.
How vast.
Right now he was just in his small little snowy world.
Acting as if nothing else existed beyond his ranch and his jobs and responsibilities.
But really it did,
Didn't it?
There was a whole other world out there.
People living completely different lives.
Having different adventures.
Good ones and bad.
Some parts of the world have never seen snow and never felt the cold like this,
He thought to himself.
And yet some parts of the world never really see much of the sun.
He made him wonder what it would be like to live in a tropical country.
Where he would be warm and sweaty and humid all the time.
That made him think of all the creatures and bugs and mosquitoes that would probably go along with that kind of humidity.
No thanks,
He thought.
I think I'll stay cold.
I'll keep the snow.
I'll keep this land.
My cattle.
Animals.
Friends.
He felt a shiver travel all the way down his spine.
A big piece of snow had landed right between his cowboy hat and the neck on his jacket,
The collar.
It fell right in between the gap and as the cold,
Wet snowflake hit his neck,
He shivered.
Took him to a whole new level of cold.
He started thinking about the chilli that the cook was making that morning.
Warm and bubbling in the pan.
Thick,
Tomatoey,
And meaty.
And his mouth started to water.
He was hoping that she'd made that nice fresh bread that she always makes with it.
A bowl of chilli with a big chunk of bread.
Fresh out of the oven.
Maybe even with a big slab of butter on it.
So it melts and oozes and gooze all through his fingers.
Now he just realised he was torturing himself.
He knew he had to be out there a couple more hours just to keep an eye on the cattle before it was time for him to go back and eat supper.
A few more hours of this quiet,
Lonely place.
He closed his eyes.
He figured he would try and nap,
But not nap.
Rest deeply,
But not fall asleep.
That way he could still hear if anything was happening around him.
He'd still sense if something was wrong.
But he could allow his body to relax a little bit more.
He felt like he was sinking deeper into meadow,
His horse.
He could feel a little bit of warmth off her body on the inside of his legs that was touching her.
He imagined that she was like the fireplace waiting for him at home.
Warm and inviting.
The comfortable chair he could sit in with the big,
Soft pillow.
He thought about kicking off his big,
Wet,
Cold boots and warming his toes in front of the fire.
It felt delicious.
He felt as if he was falling between two worlds.
And for a split second he imagined that he was in a bed in a completely different place.
He was younger and he was watching cowboys riding their horses on the wall.
He shook his head,
Opened his eyes and thought how strange that was.
It was as if he'd just popped into the future.
But then he'd never done that before.
It didn't even know if that was possible.
So he just brushed off the thought and started thinking about Chile once again.
Eventually he got home and did all the things he wanted to do.
And finally climbed into a big,
Warm bed.
The next morning Casey woke up in his ten-year-old body hearing his mom shout,
Come on Casey you're going to be late for school.
He walked across his bedroom and looked out of his bedroom window and the sun was shining bright.
He picked out a t-shirt.
He could wear a t-shirt.
It was that nice and warm.
He smiled to himself and thought about how grateful he was he lived in California.
He decided he didn't like snow very much.
It was too cold.
The end.
