Adventure Of A Prince (Long Bedtime Story With SFX)

And to enjoy this story fully and to be able to relax as fully as possible,

Just spend a few moments concentrating on your breathing.

Concentrate on breathing in and then giving a nice long breath out.

That's right.

Just take a few comfortable deep breaths like that and with your eyes closed,

Lying there relaxing,

Paying attention to those in-breaths and those out-breaths.

You can really begin to feel the relaxation flooding into your body,

Begin to feel the relaxation around your eyes,

Around your head and how it spreads through the body.

And I don't know whether it spreads from the head down or from the center of the body outwards or perhaps from the fingertips or from the feet.

That relaxation can spread in its own way comfortably,

Easily and effortlessly as you listen to this adult bedtime story.

And after a while you can begin to forget about focusing on the breathing as you focus more on the story and then as you drift off comfortably asleep.

So this story is a story about a prince.

He's got a wonderful father,

The king,

Who's a kind person,

Who everyone throughout the land loves.

So the prince wonders whether when he's king he'll be as good as his father.

And at the moment the prince doesn't feel that he's got a sense of purpose.

He lives in a beautiful palace.

The palace has high walls,

Grand gardens,

Beautiful colors everywhere,

Echoing corridors,

Exquisite decoration.

And yet he doesn't feel he has a purpose just as the prince.

He knows his father,

The king,

Has a purpose and he hopes one day he'll be as good as his father.

But as the prince he's unsure of what his purpose is.

And as the king's son he's always had a privileged position.

He's always been able to get whatever he wants and lead a life of extravagance and never wanted for anything.

And every day the prince goes to a window in the palace.

He gazes out through the window across the land.

He looks over in the direction of the mountains beyond the forest.

And he wonders,

He wonders what life beyond the palace grounds is like.

He can see all of the people in the land going about their day-to-day life.

Every day he can gaze over beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets,

Admiring the changing color of the sky.

He looks over the tops of the trees of the forest.

He looks over at the distant mountains.

He finds it a beautiful view.

And when he gazes out over the forest,

Over the mountains,

He lets his mind wander.

His mind often wanders to what it must be like out beyond the grounds of the palace.

He wonders what it must be like.

He wonders what adventures could lie beyond the walls of the palace.

He wonders what other people are getting up to.

Because he's aware that every single human being throughout the land has a story of their own.

And he wonders what are the differences between those people out across the land and those people within the palace.

Because the people across the land appear so poor,

They appear like they have nothing and yet they always appear so happy.

And it surprises him how happy many of them seem when they have so little.

So one day when gazing out of the window the prince decides to set out.

He decides to go on an adventure.

Decides to go on an adventure into the unknown.

The prince decides that he doesn't want to be stuck within the palace grounds anymore.

He's not going to find a sense of purpose while he's stuck here.

To find a sense of purpose he needs to leave the palace,

Go on a journey,

Go on an adventure of self-discovery and curiosity.

He needs to set out and find himself.

The prince decides that it's best if he sneaks out of the palace.

That way no one will know,

No one will know that he's gone.

And because nobody's known he's gone,

Nobody will realize he's the prince.

Because he won't have guards around him.

So he decides to put on some clothing that helps him to blend in with others around him outside the palace.

And he decides that when he leaves he's going to leave his problems behind in the palace.

Because they'll always be there waiting for him when he comes back.

And he wants to be able to solve his problem of what is his purpose.

And to do that he needs to go and find the answer from his journey.

So he leaves the problem behind.

He waits until it's really late at night.

As sunrise is approaching he decides that that's the ideal time to set off.

So it's dark and he's got the cover of darkness to help him get away from the palace,

Clear of the land.

And yet the morning sun will rise as he gets comfortable into his journey.

He decides that with the uncertainty ahead he just needs to flow with that uncertainty because he doesn't know what's going to lie ahead.

So the prince sneaks out of the palace.

He walks through the land.

He heads past some early risers starting to set up market stalls.

He sees a few people walking with dogs and a few people walking for enjoyment.

And he feels the warm early morning breeze on his face.

There was something about being out of the palace at this time in the morning that helped him to feel comfort.

Feeling the fresh morning air on his face,

Breathing in the fresh morning air,

Feeling it enter his nostril.

And as he continued his journey and the sun began to rise he could notice the light glistening off of cobwebs,

Off of the dew in the cobwebs.

As the cobwebs blew lightly on the grass he could feel the fresh air.

And while he walked he was aware of the sound of each step that he took as he strode confidently and calmly into this unknown adventure.

And the prince gazed around him and while he was gazing around he became more aware of movement.

Where the breeze was moving the grass and the leaves in the trees and the rustling sound and the sight of some clouds moving in the sky.

And the prince chose to walk along the side of a stream and he could notice the stream just some distance away so he walked towards the stream.

He felt that that stream probably started in the mountains.

So he walked towards the stream and decided to follow the stream all the way to the mountains.

As the prince continued his journey he felt something he'd never felt before.

It was a strange sensation in his stomach.

He felt a kind of excitement in his stomach that spread around into his chest and tingled down into his arms and his leg.

He had an excitement about this adventure into the unknown.

And as the prince walked comfortably along the side of the stream he was aware of the way the light was shimmering on the water.

He could notice some small fish swimming under the shimmering surface.

Some would remain stationary and then suddenly dart around.

Others would just lazily be swimming under the water in shoals.

And he could hear the trickling sound of the water and he found the sound of the trickling water so relaxing,

So comforting,

So calming.

And the prince decided to hold on to a sense of that calm,

Relaxing feeling while he paid attention to the journey at hand and continued walking along the side of the stream towards the mountains in the distance.

And he followed the stream into the forest.

And as he followed the stream into the forest he noticed how the wind began to die down.

The rustling sound of the leaves could be heard overhead.

The light in the forest began to become dimmer and darker.

And he began to notice more forest sounds and less of the sounds from outside the forest as he walked deeper and deeper into the forest.

He noticed how in the forest the leaves on the ground were much drier and so each step he took he could hear the crunching crackling sound of the leaves beneath his feet.

Something about being in the forest seemed to make the sounds appear more muffled than they appeared out in the open.

And he found this curious experience.

And off in the distance the prince could hear a whistling.

So as he continued walking along the path he wondered who would be out there,

Who would be out in this forest whistling.

He was curious to discover and find that out.

He felt the whistling sounded a little jolly.

So he decided it was safe to go and investigate.

The prince decided that he should trust the decisions that he made.

Because he was sure that any of those decisions could be the decisions that help him to find the answer to the reason he left the palace.

So the prince continued walking and walking deeper and deeper into the forest.

And as he walked he continued to have this sense of being followed.

He didn't know what was following him but he had this sense that something was following him,

That someone was there,

That they were close behind.

After walking for what seemed like many hours the prince finally caught up with the person who was whistling.

And he looked over to where the whistling was coming from and he saw a wise one.

The wise one was just stopped by a pool of water.

He could notice how the stream was trickling into this pool of water before flowing away from the fall of water.

So he approached the wise one and he asked,

What are you doing here?

And the wise one replied,

He often walks out into the middle of nowhere.

He walks out into the middle of the forest to be able to relax and hear himself think.

The prince wondered to himself,

Why do you need to walk all the way out here just to relax and hear yourself think?

Couldn't you just sit at home and sit quietly and hear yourself think?

The wise one carried on talking.

The wise one continued to explain that sometimes you just need to go somewhere to escape from it all.

Somewhere where no one else is.

The wise one then threw a sparkling stone into the pool.

The prince watched that stone sink slowly to the bottom of the pool.

And the wise one and the prince had their attention looking at where the stone went in.

And the wise one told the prince to watch and pay attention to what is happening to that water.

The prince looked and watched.

He didn't really understand what he was supposed to have seen.

All he saw was ripples spreading out throughout the pool.

And then after a few moments the pond calmed down again and the ripples went back to normal with just the natural waves across the water.

And as he gazed through the water he could notice the glistening on the stone where it lay on the bottom under the water.

But at this point he didn't understand what it all meant.

And the wise man looked over at the prince and told him when the time is right you will understand.

So the prince remembered this message and carried on his way still with that sense of being followed.

And the prince began to feel that sense of being followed in his stomach.

The prince didn't know whether that sense in his stomach was good or bad.

He just knew he didn't like it.

So the prince began to speed up as he left the wise one.

He began to run through the forest.

He was pushing branches out the way,

Trampling over leaves,

Cracking twigs.

He could feel his heart pounding.

He could hear his breathing as he ran through the forest.

The prince was aware of the warmth of his body as he was trying to get away from whatever was following him.

Eventually the prince came to a clearing.

He ran to the other side of the clearing,

Turned and looked.

He knew that whatever was following him would have to come across the same clearing that he just came across.

And he looked.

And he looked.

He could still hear his heart pounding,

His deep breathing.

And he looked.

And he noticed his sweating as he tried to now calm himself down.

And as he looked he eventually saw something coming out into the clearing.

He noticed the eyes first,

Then the nose.

And then he noticed it was a wolf.

And this wolf had clearly been the creature that had been following him.

The prince didn't know much about wolves.

He'd heard stories.

He'd heard stories about wolves attacking people.

So the prince was scared.

And he was angry that he'd managed to be followed.

He became really disheartened at the thought that anything could happen now and there was nothing he could do.

And at this point the strangest thing happened to the prince.

Without knowing how it happened the prince began to logically think about the situation.

And the more he logically began to think about the situation,

The more his strong emotional state began to disappear.

The anger began to go away.

His disheartenedness began to fade away.

He began to feel calmer,

More relaxed.

And as he continued to logically think of more and more reasons about how he could deal with the situation and how he couldn't have helped being followed because wolves do have much better senses than people,

He began to feel more pleased and excited that he was going to find a solution to this current problem.

And all the old emotional states that he didn't want there at that moment began to disperse,

To fade away.

He realized that he had achieved a lot from his journey so far already.

And all the time he was thinking this,

The wolf was getting closer and closer,

Padding its way across the clearing.

And the prince thought that that wolf looked very much like a dog.

And he thought even if the wolf naturally kills things and eats meat,

That doesn't mean that it's going to harm him.

And the prince's natural emotional situation was that he should run away or stand and fight.

But the prince decided to do something completely different.

He decided to calmly approach the wolf.

He had a small smile on his face,

His shoulders were relaxed,

His hands were open.

And he calmly walked across the clearing,

In the most non-threatening way that he could find.

And as he approached the wolf,

He knelt down on the ground,

Held out his hand for the wolf to come to him.

And surprisingly,

The wolf approached him.

And the wolf started eating out of his hand.

And within a few moments,

The prince was petting the wolf.

And the prince remembered that in the past as a child,

He'd been very good with animals.

He'd calmed horses down.

Just by walking up to them calmly,

While talking calmly to them,

And being relaxed around them,

He'd calm dogs down in the same kind of way.

And he realized that his ability to do those sort of things in those situations,

Meant that he was able to draw on those memories now,

And those abilities now,

To be able to handle this new situation,

Where he initially felt threatened.

And the prince didn't know why he thought that that was an important revelation to him.

He only knew that it was.

And this wolf was no ordinary wolf.

This wolf was there for a reason.

It was there to help guide the prince safely up into the mountains.

And the prince still didn't know exactly how he was going to find the answer to his problem back at the palace.

He just had this feeling that if he just went with the uncertainty,

The answer would come to him.

And the prince followed the wolf up into the mountains.

It was a treacherous road,

With jagged rocks,

Steep cliffs.

And there were some areas where the prince had to help the wolf up into them,

And other areas where the wolf had to help the prince into them.

He could hear how his footsteps had changed.

The sound of them had changed because the terrain had changed.

And the prince and the wolf had to work together.

And together they were able to quickly ascend the mountain.

And the prince climbed higher and higher into the mountains.

He was aware of the colors of the rocks,

How when he looked back he could see the green of the forest.

And when he looked up he could notice the bubbling cover of cloud floating overhead.

And the prince and the wolf kept climbing.

And they climbed above the cloud cover.

And when they looked back and down they could see a carpet of white.

And when he looked up he noticed that everything was white on the mountain as well.

That the mountain was covered in snow.

And the wolf and the prince continued to climb through the snow,

Finding it more and more of a struggle the higher and higher they went.

And the only thing that kept the prince going on this arduous trek up through the mountain was that he was beginning to truly see himself as not having that problem by the time he got back to the palace.

And somehow the wolf managed to understand him.

And whatever he needed the wolf managed to help him with.

It was as if somehow he was able to communicate with the animals in a way that he could never have imagined.

He was communicating through body language,

Through the way he used his voice and his ability to remain calm with the wolf.

And the higher and higher up the mountain the prince went the more focused his attention became on the road ahead.

And at this point in his journey he didn't want to stray too far to the left or the right because either way could be lethal for him.

And after much struggling and much hard work the prince could see a cave up ahead high up in this mountaintop.

And at the same time as that the prince reached a peak where he could turn around and as he looked behind him a surprising thing had happened.

The clouds had all begun to disperse and he could see the palace off in the distance.

He could see his land,

He could see the forest and he could see multiple paths that he could have taken up the mountain.

And he could see the stream where it entered into the forest.

He could see the pool in the forest.

He could see the clearing.

He could see the stream carrying on out the other side of the forest off in the direction of the palace.

And as he looked out towards the palace he knew that somewhere over there was that old problem that he'd left behind.

And now he was so far away from it and up a mountain with this new perspective.

The thing he wondered now was how he was going to get back there.

He really wanted to get back in one day and yet it had taken him nearly all day to get to where he was now.

And as the prince entered the cave with his wolf and they sat down and he lit a fire and he warmed up and noticed the flickering of the flames on the walls.

He began to gaze into the fire listening to the crackling,

Gazing with the flickering of the light out the corner of his eyes.

Hearing the sound of the wind hissing at the entrance to the cave,

The prince's mind began to wander.

And the prince began to wander about how he was going to get back.

And as he gazed at the fire the outside of his vision began to get blurry and he began to feel really relaxed.

And it was as if time began to stand still.

As if time began to really slow down.

As if the flickering began to almost come to a halt.

And the prince began to think about many ideas about how he could get down and the quickest way of getting back to the palace.

And he thought of many ideas.

He thought about perhaps there could be a tunnel leading all the way back there.

He imagined that perhaps he could invent a flying machine.

He thought that would never happen.

He imagined he could ride back on the wolf's back but then realized that he would be too big to do a thing like that.

And as his gaze gradually lifted up from the fire in a trancey kind of way,

He became aware of some paintings around the walls.

He didn't quite know what they meant.

And then it was almost as if the wolf was able to communicate with him.

It was almost as if the wolf was the wise one.

And I don't know how it happened but the wolf said to the prince,

What it is that you need is to have many viewpoints.

The wolf said to him,

You know all that you've learned from your journey.

You just don't know that you know it.

And you know on one level you've remembered all that you've remembered.

You just don't know that you've remembered it all.

And the things that you've learned have many benefits for the future.

And all the things you've learned you've remembered so well on many levels.

You just don't know you've learned them all.

And the prince somehow managed to take all this in instinctively.

Almost in a dreamlike kind of way.

And he decided the best response to this would be to let himself go and to trust the instinctive part of his mind.

And the wolf told him,

Whenever you need me,

Wherever you are,

Just close your eyes,

Count to ten.

And with each count on each out breath you can relax and you can find yourself back here in this cave where you can meet me again in this trancey state of mind gazing into the fire.

And you can ask me questions and I will answer them wisely,

Helping you with things you do not yet know.

And the prince decided that this was a good time to begin to take that leap of faith.

He could honestly and fully see himself as not having that old problem that he came here to sort out.

He didn't know yet how it was going to sort itself out and go away.

He just knew it was no longer going to exist.

He thought to himself all he needs now is to think creatively and see many different viewpoints.

The prince stood up,

He backed up in the cave,

He took a few deep breaths and then he ran.

He ran like the wind,

He ran faster and faster.

And the wolf just watched as he ran past the fire,

Past the wolf towards the entrance of the cave,

And he ran and he ran.

And as he reached the entrance he just jumped.

And as he left the cave all that was below him was nothing.

He was aware that somewhere beneath the clouds below him was the mountain and the forest.

And as the prince fell he hoped that this leap of faith worked out.

He was trusting his instinctive part of himself and as he fell through the clouds he closed his eyes and relaxed.

And as he relaxed he felt a tingling feeling throughout his hands and in his body.

And as everything began to tingle he felt himself go into a dreamlike state.

And then he opened his eyes and soared back above the clouds and found himself flying.

He discovered that he'd become an eagle,

A graceful golden eagle soaring and flying.

He could feel the wind rushing beneath his wings.

He could notice the motion of the world around him as he spun in the sky.

And as he dived down towards the ground and swooped up he became aware of how his hearing had got more sensitive,

His vision had drastically increased and improved.

He was able to look at something and focus in on it,

Almost like looking through binoculars.

And as he flew above the forest and looked down on the stream he gazed off towards his kingdom,

Back towards the palace.

He knew now what he needed to know,

To know that when he got back to the palace he would no longer have the problem that sent him on his quest in the first place.

He was able to see so many viewpoints,

He could fly up really high and notice the curving of the earth,

He could swoop down really low and watch colors splash by in an instant.

Or he could just glide effortlessly and enjoy peace,

Relaxation in the warm air currents.

Just enjoying the floating feeling.

And the prince now knew how he's going to make it back to the palace by the end of the day.

And as he approached his land,

He came swooping in low,

Turned back into the prince,

Rolling as he hit the ground,

Landing on his feet.

And with great excitement he ran across the land,

Back towards the palace,

Running through the streets,

Running excitedly up to the palace,

Running up to the palace door,

Letting himself in,

Running up to his favorite window,

Gazing out back out over the land,

Noticing the sun setting,

Gazing at the mountains,

Over the forest.

And he could swear that he could have a sense of the wolf looking back at him,

And he remembered what it was the wolf said to him.

And what he discovered was that he now no longer had that problem that sent him on the adventure.

Yet he knew that he'd love to go on this adventure again in the future when the time is right.

So he lay down,

Closed his eyes and relaxed in bed.

And as he felt a sense of peace and clarity,

He took a few deep breaths and drifted comfortably and relaxed asleep,

Falling comfortably and relaxed asleep.