The Magical Ruins: Long Sleep Meditation Bedtime Story

In this long sleep story with sound effects, (the story is about 46 minutes long), the journey to the magical ruins, walking through a jungle, finding the ruins of an old temple, lighting a campfire, and performing a ritual to evoke the dragon spirit, before settling down in a tent, listening to the sounds of the campfire and the nighttime nature as you fall comfortably asleep. This bedtime story incorporates two relaxation processes, a body scan process and a staircase process.

Transcript

Welcome to this slumberland sleep story.

I'll be your guide as you journey to the magical ruins,

Walking through a jungle,

Finding the ruins of an old temple,

Lighting a campfire and performing a ritual to evoke the dragon spirit,

Before settling down in a tent and drifting peacefully and comfortably asleep.

I'd like to take this moment to wish you the most peaceful night's sleep and pleasant dreams as you fall asleep to this sleep story.

Before we begin the story you can take a few moments to settle down comfortably.

You can shift about a little if you need to,

To make yourself even more comfortable.

And when you're ready you can let your eyes gently close and as the story unfolds you can take a few deep breaths,

Allowing the out breaths to be a little longer than the in breaths.

This triggers the body's natural relaxation response and as you relax you can find yourself walking through a jungle one evening.

As you quietly and comfortably walk through this jungle you can be aware of the sounds around you,

The fading sounds of the daytime animals and the developing sounds of the evening animals.

You can notice the faint sound of the leaves and branches of the trees rustling high overhead as the wind blows gently over the tops of the tall canopy,

For a little light makes it to the jungle floor here,

Even at the height of daytime due to the dense mass of leaves and branches overhead.

You can occasionally hear the movement of animals creeping through the treetops,

Perhaps finding their way home to settle down for the night.

There is a profound stillness to the air in this jungle which can give this place an otherworldly feeling.

Among the dense trees you can see fireflies dancing in the diminishing light as the light from the day continues to fade.

So you light your way with a torch as you move the torch around in the inky darkness so the distorted shadows of branches,

Tree trunks and leafy plants dance around you.

You continue to push on deeper and deeper into the jungle,

Brushing aside and hacking through leaves and small branches and trees which stand in your way,

Clearing a path before you.

Occasionally you touch broad leaves as you move them out of your way,

Feeling the oily,

Waxy texture of those dense leaves between your fingertips.

Other times you rest your hand on the bark of trees as you climb over obstacles in your path,

Aware of the rough texture under the palm of your hand and fingers which add additional grippage to help you remain steady as you continue to navigate in the dark.

While trekking deeper and deeper into this jungle in darkness you notice how difficult it is to track time and to be aware of how far you have traveled.

Everything around you in the darkness looks and sounds the same.

Every direction seems to be the same as any other direction.

You don't feel like you're getting any closer to anything or further away from anything like you might do when you normally travel somewhere.

From time to time as you walk you check with a GPS device that you're still on track with where you're going.

You follow the planned route deeper and deeper into the jungle,

Getting closer and closer to your planned destination.

You don't know what you'll find at that destination.

You've worked out that it should be the site of an ancient temple but as no one has been there for at least hundreds of years you only have the evidence you gathered to go on.

There are no photographs or modern reports of this location,

Mainly just myths and legends and stories told through the generations.

Eventually while walking you notice that the ground seems to be lumpier than it has been for a while.

You assume that perhaps you're closing in on the temple and maybe these are the ruins of the vast city rumored to have existed around the temple.

You carefully navigate in the dark over the rocky undergrowth,

Weaving between the trees,

Continuing deeper and deeper into this jungle.

After some time longer your torchlight catches a glimpse of the ruins of a stone wall protruding out from the jungle floor.

You head towards that wall and can see more walls including a corner wall revealing the heart of the temple.

Having arrived at the temple you enjoy finally being able to stop and rest.

The jungle has encroached around the outside of the ruins but there is a little less foliage within the walls of these ruins.

You light a campfire,

Its light illuminating the masonry,

Flickering and dancing,

The light gently tickling the jungle beyond the ruins.

You set up a tent a short distance from the campfire,

Hang a torch inside the tent and settle down,

Feeling that pleasure of relaxing and resting your feet after a long walk.

You have some food and drink before taking a few moments to write down your experiences so far,

Recording your journey,

Where you came from,

The route you have traveled,

How long it has taken you to get here,

Anything of interest which you have noticed on your adventure.

You then decide to rest back a moment before exploring this location and rest a little longer.

You close your eyes,

Take a few deep comfortable breaths and allow yourself to drift deeper and deeper into that pleasant reverie.

And as you drift into that reverie,

You can have a sense of relaxing your mind and body.

You focus on the top of your head,

Noticing what your head is resting on,

How it is supported gently in place,

The comfort in and around your head resting there.

Having a sense of the muscles around your scalp and the back of your head,

Softening and relaxing,

Drawing in peace and comfort with each breath that you take,

Before moving your awareness around your face,

Focusing on what it's like for that relaxation to spread around your face,

Your ears and your cheeks.

Having the muscles in these areas soften and relax,

Relaxing the muscles around your eyes and across your forehead,

While the muscles around the side of your head and over the top of your head begin to relax deeper and deeper.

Noticing how you can pay attention to fading tension or perhaps find that tension dissolves without paying it any attention at all,

You continue to allow that relaxation to spread down around your mouth,

Relaxing your lips and your jaw,

Relaxing the muscles around the side of your neck,

Around the back of your neck and around your throat.

And as your jaw relaxes and hangs slightly loose,

Limp and comfortable,

That relaxation can continue to move down to your shoulders and upper back,

And I don't know whether that relaxation happens fastest around your shoulders or in the upper back or perhaps down the tops or the front of your shoulders.

As that relaxation progresses around your back and your chest,

Softening and relaxing those muscles fully,

Deeply and comfortably,

And as those muscles soften and relax while you rest there,

That relaxation can begin to spread down the arms to the hands,

All the way down to the tips of your fingers,

And I don't know which arm will relax fully fastest,

Whether it'll be the left arm left there relaxing faster than the right arm,

Or whether the arm that's right relaxes faster.

Or whether you discover that the arms relax at the same rate and speed as each other,

And as that relaxation continues through those arms,

It can flow down through your stomach,

Sides and lower back,

All the way down to your bottom,

Before extending deeply down through your legs to the tips of your toes,

And as your body becomes deeper and deeper relaxed,

While you drift into the most pleasant sleep,

So your mind begins to relax,

You begin to have a sense of a healing light touching your forehead,

Enveloping your face and head with healing deep relaxation,

Absorbing comfortably and gently into you with each in-breath that you take,

Filling you with healing peace and calm,

Spreading that healing,

Restorative,

Recuperative light down through your body,

Breathing in healing,

Calm relaxation and breathing out any stress or tension,

Aware of that healing light passing comfortably down your neck,

Softening and relaxing those muscles,

Spreading that healing light throughout the neck,

As it spreads down with the next breath to your shoulders,

Around the back of your neck and down into your arms,

Gradually continuing that flow of healing light all the way down to the tips of your fingers,

And with another in-breath,

The healing light can spread down through the body,

Softening and relaxing muscles,

Healing deep within the body,

Filling the body with pleasure and deep relaxation,

As the light journeys down,

Around your stomach,

Your lower back and sides,

Into your buttocks and all the way down your legs to the soles of your feet,

Filling your whole body with that healing,

Restorative light,

And as you allow that light to flow with each breath,

You can find your mind drifting deeper and deeper into a reverie,

Imagining yourself waking from this cosy slumber,

Leaving the tent and seeing this landscape as it was centuries earlier,

Finding yourself in the temple,

Seeing an altar in the centre of this temple,

And you can see someone performing a ritual,

You watch and learn what they're doing,

After you have observed the full ritual,

You leave the temple and enter the city,

It's night time and you can see the straight rows of houses and the market softly illuminated by torches flickering down the streets,

With the jungle beyond the city boundary,

Seeing the night sky stretched overhead,

You walk through the city,

Towards the towering jungle,

Looking out into the darkness,

Thinking about the future of this location,

How the city will become abandoned and the jungle will progress into the city limits,

Until one day there'll be no sign of this city remaining,

Just nature and hidden ruins,

From the boundary of this city,

You look back towards the temple,

Standing tall at the centre of this sprawling ancient metropolis,

You walk slowly back to the temple,

Seeing the dusty arc of the Milky Way reaching across the sky,

Back at the temple,

You head into your tent,

Lay down and slowly awaken from your reverie in your tent in the ruins,

You leave your tent,

Aware that it is still night time and only a few hours have passed,

You go over to your campfire and notice that by setting it up in the middle of the most clear area,

You have placed it where the altar was in your reverie,

You begin to recite the ritual you observed,

As you speak in a calm and monotone voice,

The campfire starts to crackle and pop,

Then you notice the firelight dancing and spinning before seeming to take shape,

Taking on the form of an ethereal dragon,

You continue with the ritual as the spirit dragon begins to swirl around the fire,

Rising higher and higher up into the air,

And then almost as quickly as that dragon appeared,

It fades away,

As it does,

So you hear a clicking and then gentle rumbling sound as the ground beyond the fire begins to move and descend,

You watch as the ground lowers,

Vines rip,

Mud falls down onto the descending ground,

You notice that the ground isn't descending evenly,

At first all of the descending ground moves down evenly,

Then a row of descending ground nearest to you stops about a foot into its descent,

Then shortly after this,

After the ground has descended about another foot,

Another row of ground stops descending,

Almost like steps are forming,

With the first step down being nearest to you,

It takes a while of that ground slowly lowering for all of the steps to form,

You look down the steps,

You can faintly see that there appears to be a room down those steps,

You light a torch from the fire and walk around the outside of the area which has just descended,

You try to see how far down the steps go and whether you can see into the room at the bottom,

You decide that you can't see much from up here and so you're going to walk down those steps,

To that room,

You try to count from the side of the hole how many steps there are for you to descend,

You count 20,

Head to the top step and begin to slowly walk down those steps,

Finding yourself feeling a deeper sense of peace,

Calm and clarity with each step that you take,

Stepping onto step 20,

Then 19,

Down to 18,

17,

Becoming deeper and deeper absorbed in the experience with each step,

16,

15,

14,

Slowly,

Carefully,

Softly descending,

13,

12,

11,

All the way,

Deeper and deeper,

Noticing the way your torchlight flickers on the walls and illuminates a short distance in front of you,

10,

9,

8,

Slowly,

Deeper and deeper absorbed in the experience,

7,

5,

Smelling a fragrant,

Relaxing,

Comforting smell coming from the revealed room at the bottom of the steps,

4,

3,

2,

And stepping off of the bottom step,

1,

Finding yourself walking into that room at the bottom of those steps,

And as you walk into that room,

You notice torches in torch holders on either side of the entrance to this room,

You light those torches,

Watching them dance to life,

Casting the most beautiful soft orange glow around the walls,

There are two more torches on the far wall,

You head over to those and do the same,

Filling in the darkness at the back of the room with that soft,

Gentle,

Comforting,

Glowing light,

This room seems to have survived the encroaching jungle,

With the room looking as it would have looked the last time it was sealed,

Along the back wall of this room is a relief depicting a ritual,

You recognise the beginning of the relief as being the above ground ritual which you have performed,

In the middle of the wall up against the wall is a stone table,

On that table are some golden items,

These items look as new as the day they were created,

The golden bowl on the table is filled with oil with purple fragrant rose petals floating on the surface,

Next to the bowl is a golden chalice containing a rich,

Dark red liquid which looks like red wine,

You can see on the relief and you witnessed in your dream that the final step in the ritual is to take a sip of that drink and sit on the throne like chair in this room,

You gently lift the chalice and take a sip of the liquid,

The liquid tastes sweet and pleasant,

You place that chalice back on the table before sitting down deeply and comfortably in that chair,

As you sit in that chair so you notice swirling colours and light in this room,

The torch lights flicker as if there is a swirling breeze yet you can't feel any breeze on your cheeks,

You notice that spirit dragon swirling and forming in the middle of this room,

Once fully formed the dragon floats in the air and in a deep comforting voice it begins to talk to you,

You find that you can understand what it's saying,

You have evoked me from my slumber,

Calling forth my magical powers to share with you the wisdom and strength of the dragon,

This temple was built on an intersection of ley lines which makes the energy of those ley lines fall into a harmonic resonance at a frequency below consciousness,

This frequency resonates at the same frequency the brain resonates when dreaming,

Giving those in this location the power of time sight,

The ability to see the past as it was in this location and the future possibilities which may come to pass,

Those people can then use these insights to advise and guide the community,

You have seen the past as it was and can focus on seeing the sprawling infinite tendrils of the future branching out from this moment,

You just have to sleep and dream and I am formed from a spark manifesting from the energy in this location to communicate with those who summon me,

Created from the infinite wisdom and timeless moment to guide travelers on their quest for knowledge and wisdom,

You find that as the dragon speaks so you become transfixed on their voice,

On their presence and in the moment,

Curious what you'll learn from them here and you have come here to learn,

To gain knowledge of this location and of those who once lived here,

You came here to summon me,

To see if the myths were true,

To see if I existed and to see how the spirit of the dragon can infuse within you to help with your personal growth towards the person you want to become in the future,

You want to see if I can show you your possible futures and help you to map out a path to follow and the interesting thing about paths to the future is that they are uncertain,

Every decision divides the path into new directions,

So you can see the infinite possibilities of moments in time in the future,

You can have an idea of the types of behaviors which lead towards those futures,

But when looking from the present towards the futures,

They become hazy the further you look,

The dragon spirit then begins to guide you into a state of mind which helps you to see the network of future possibilities,

While the dragon speaks,

So a large tree begins to form in front of you,

With its fine roots spreading out from the center in all directions,

Dividing as they go,

Becoming increasingly complex,

Pulsing with light and as those roots spread,

So the branches grow and leaves fill the tree,

The dragon explains that this is the tree of your life,

The branches and leaves represent the life you will lead,

While the roots represent all the possible paths available to you,

You notice as you look closely at those pulsating roots,

That the pulsating light isn't just a light pulsing,

It is like viewing a three dimensional movie of your life from above as it unfolds within the strands of the roots,

With every decision point leading to a strand of root branching off from the preceding root and forming more roots,

The dragon asks you to think about the future you would like,

Asking when you are old and looking back over your life,

What do you want to recall,

Who do you want to be remembered as,

What do you want to have achieved,

What do you want your legacy to be,

How do you want to have been responding to life's challenges,

How do you want to respond to opportunities which present themselves,

As you think about these questions and other questions about who and how you want to be in the future,

You notice that the pulsing light changes colour over patches of the roots,

When thinking about the answer to the first question,

All of those options in line with achieving that pulse a new colour,

When thinking about the answer to the next question,

That new pulsing colour narrows down,

With the third question it narrows further still,

With each question the area illuminated and pulsing with this new colour narrows,

You notice that there are fewer immediate options for getting on the correct path,

But as that path flows into the future it widens as more paths contain the desired changes established earlier in the journey,

Once all questions are asked and you have instinctively answered all of those questions,

A clear path through the roots which fans out into all potential futures containing the desired outcomes that you want stabilises and begins to glow white and pure,

The pulsing of that white pure light speeds up until the pulsing is happening so fast that the light looks steady and constant,

At this point the dragon circles the tree and descends to the floor,

Circling above the roots,

It says to you to focus on the beginning of that light,

Look at the point that illuminated root touches the tree,

Focus on that spot,

Hold all of your attention on that spot,

They say they'll count down from three and on the count of one you'll find yourself projected into that point you're focusing on,

Projecting into this path,

Three,

Two,

One,

Now,

And on the count of one you can find yourself projected into this pleasantly glowing pure path,

Finding yourself seeing through your own eyes,

Hearing through your own ears,

Feeling what you will feel as you experience living this life,

As the you that you want to be,

You have a sense of following this path over the coming weeks,

Then months,

Occasionally looking back at how things have progressed,

Following the path over the first year,

Seeing how far you have come and how different things are to how you expect they would have been had you not been following this path,

And a sense of following this path from one year to the next,

Often looking back at your progress,

At what you have achieved,

At who you have become and what you have been pleased to notice,

Finding milestones triggering that reminiscing and discovering that you can and have always keep these changes in mind honestly,

Fully and instinctively,

After experiencing all of this,

You find yourself projected back into the you in that chair,

The light fades,

The tree fades,

The dragon says you have what you came here for and they begin to fade,

You find that you are in this room with just the jungle sounds from outside in the background and silence from within the room,

With the gentle flicker of light of those torches dancing on the walls,

You ascend up the steps and back out into the night time jungle,

As you leave the underground chamber,

The steps seem to rise and seal behind you,

You find yourself next to the crackling campfire in the ruins with little evidence of the experience you've just had,

You can hear the jungle sounds around you,

The crackling of that fire and you can see the way the firelight is glowing around the trees and the crumbling stone walls,

You head into your tent,

Thinking about the experience,

It already is beginning to seem unreal,

You take a few moments to write down and record your experiences,

Concluding the experiences from the whole day and while thinking about what evidence you have for the reality of the experience,

You begin to close your eyes and drift comfortably asleep and as you drift asleep,

You begin to dream to the sounds of the jungle and the crackling fire in the background and as you dream so you find yourself drifting in time,

Not only do you see the paths laid out before you of this location but you also see your own paths revealed below you and the pure white glowing path,

You instinctively descend into that path and explore that bright future while drifting deeper and deeper asleep as you find yourself drifting and floating deeply relaxed asleep into slumberland