Casey The Cowboy - The Stars - Children's Sleep Story

Are you ready to meditate with Kari?

Try and get completely comfortable in your bed.

Make sure that you're ready to relax your body and let go of your day.

Casey was laid in bed.

It had a really hard day at school.

He felt like he did not so great on one of his math tests.

He wasn't sure yet completely but when he sat down for the test there was a lot of questions he didn't know the answers to.

And he was really disappointed in himself and that stressed him out for the rest of the day so the day was pretty rough.

He got home,

Told his mom all about it.

Went upstairs,

Read one of his cowboy books for a while.

That always seemed to cheer him up but today was,

It was hard.

The book was good but he was still quite sad,

Quite disappointed and he was having a hard time getting into his book,

Like really being able to be in his book.

Sometimes when he reads books he can feel as if he's there living the cowboy life,

Like when he goes to sleep at night with his magical lamp.

But today his book just wasn't doing anything for him.

He watched TV for a bit,

That was okay.

He ended up deciding to just have a shower,

Put his pajamas on,

Get into bed and see if he could just forget about today totally.

He turned on his light,

His night light that reflected cowboys on horses,

On all the walls of his room and he laid there with his eyes open,

Reminded once again of how much he loved that night light.

Of course if you'd listened to the other story about Casey you would know that this night light,

Along with when he takes his three deep breaths,

Casey visits his past life,

His past life when he was a cowboy.

In his dream he's 17.

In reality Casey's actually 10,

But when he turns on his magical light at night and it reflects the cowboys around his room,

Something happens to Casey.

It's like he knows he's going to go to a different place,

Even if that different place isn't actually somewhere here on earth.

He knows that when he dreams he's going to go back to his past life,

A different life,

When he was Casey the cowboy,

Here on earth,

But in a different life,

In a different body,

In a different time.

That's what his past life is all about.

He laid wondering if he'd had other past lives,

When maybe he was a doctor or past lives when maybe he was a woman,

A mother,

A sister.

He had dreams all the time just about Casey the cowboy.

He never had any other past life dreams,

Not that he can remember.

Casey started to think about his math test again and got a little bit sad and depressed and heavy once again.

So he closed his eyes.

Oh may the end of this day please be soon,

He thought to himself.

He took his first deep breath.

And then another.

And then another.

Casey found himself on his horse.

He was coming back from the prairie.

He'd been out there to check all the different fences around the prairie to make sure none of the cattle would get out.

Everything looked good.

He was tired.

He'd been busy all day trying to wrangle the cattle along with the dogs from one field to another.

He was doing it all by himself.

It was hard work.

He was hungry.

His bones hurt.

He was dirty.

He smelled sweaty.

He needed to shower and let go of the day.

The stars were already up in the sky and his tummy was rambling.

He was riding past the pig pen.

Porky and Pie,

His pigs,

Were running around in circles,

Panting frantically as if they were chasing one another around and around and around and around.

He pulled on Meadow's reins and she stopped and he watched the pigs.

It made him laugh.

What are you guys doing?

He said out loud.

The pigs looked up at him but didn't stop running.

They were running round and round and round really,

Really fast.

He said,

We had too much cake,

Too much sugar.

We can't sleep.

We're trying to run off some energy.

Casey just laughed again and shook his head.

Good luck with that,

He said and carried on riding towards the barn.

The rest of the animals all looked good.

He rode past the chickens.

All was well there.

They'd already put themselves up in the chicken pen.

Fast asleep probably.

They do it automatically every night.

When the sun goes down,

The chickens put themselves to bed.

His cow,

Lily,

Was quietly munching away on some grass and some hay.

She was fine.

He entered into the barn,

Slid down off Meadow's back.

He took off the saddle.

He brushed her down,

Rubbed his face across her nose.

Something he always does.

It's like he's saying thank you and good night.

He opened his eyes a little bit and as he sweeped his face from left to right,

He could see the black stripe down her nose.

And then he put Meadow in the barn and closed the gate and walked over to where there was a big stack of hay and laid back on it.

His bones were very,

Very tired.

His tummy was rumbling and gurgling and he was hungry.

But he couldn't decide which was the strongest feeling.

Wanting to just lay down on the hay just for a minute,

Just to rest.

Or did he need to go into the house,

Go to the kitchen and hopefully pull a meal out of the fridge that one of the workers there had made earlier for him?

That was his hope.

That was normally the case,

But you never know.

He pulled one single piece of hay from the stack and placed it in between his teeth.

He picked at his teeth as if he was cleaning in between them,

Like he was using the hay as a toothpick.

Not that his teeth were dirty,

Just out of habit,

Something to do,

Something that was mindless and relaxing.

There was a hole in the barn,

In the roof.

He liked to lay in this particular spot and stare at the stars.

It was always calming.

He always felt relaxed and in a strange way,

As if he was being drawn up to the stars through the roof of the barn,

As if they were calling to him,

Each one of them with a different voice and a different name.

He imagined in his mind that each star would be a different place to go.

He wondered what it would take to get to the stars.

Would he have to be rich and have some kind of spacecraft,

Like you do when you go to the moon?

Thought about how he would make money.

How would he have enough money to fly to the moon and to visit the different stars?

Who has that much money,

He thought.

And then that made him think about some people on earth that do have that much money.

And then he started to think about if he really wanted that much money.

His thoughts trailed into one thought and then into another thought and then into another thought.

And then he caught himself thinking about all of these mindless thoughts,

Things that didn't really matter,

That seemed to be consuming his mind,

Taking over the space in his head on all these silly,

Pointless thoughts that drift into each other or seem to fit with each other like a jigsaw puzzle.

And then he started to think about the mind and how crazy it was,

How it does that.

You start thinking about one thing and literally one minute later you've thought about ten other things.

You just drift into the next piece,

Drift into the next piece and drift into the next piece.

And then he pulled his attention back to where he was,

In his body,

Laid down resting on the hay,

Staring up at the sky.

Because he was out in the country,

The sky was so clear.

It wasn't like back home in his other life,

In his daytime life when he's ten and he lives in the city.

So much smog and pollution from the city that the sky is never that clear.

You can see the stars through a hay sometimes but it's never like this.

He found himself just laying there in complete gratitude and appreciation for the night sky.

Something so simple as twinkling stars was making him very happy.

He forgot about how hungry he was.

Sometimes he'd drift back into being in the barn because Meadow was making horse noises or moving her hooves around on the stable floor and it made certain sounds and that would bring him back into where he was.

But he kept drifting off into the sky.

There was one star brighter than all the others.

He assumed that that planet,

That star,

Would be like the main planet there in the sky.

Like visiting downtown.

It was busier,

More bustly.

More beings lived on that star,

He thought.

It was the place to go if he wanted to be in the midst of more action.

So much going on there,

I bet.

And then all the other stars around had different stories that he made up about what it would be like to visit these different places.

His tummy eventually stopped gurgling and making noises and he forgot about being hungry.

The heaviness of his body and the sweet,

Comfortable smell and feel of hay had taken over his thoughts.

They'd won.

He was definitely more tired than hungry.

He pulled his cowboy hat down over his eyes as if he was closing out the world.

Turning off the lights.

Turning off the stars in the sky.

Turning off the lights of the dawn.

The moon shining through.

Turning off all the shadows.

Turning off all the sounds.

And within seconds he was asleep.

Fast asleep.

When Casey opened his eyes in the morning,

He was back in his normal self.

Back in the city.

Back in his bedroom.

Back in his other life.

Until tonight,

Of course.

I wonder what'll happen tonight,

He thought.

The end.