The Underwater Pyramid (Long Meditation Bedtime Story)

So as you take a moment to close your eyes and begin to relax and fall asleep,

I don't know whether you'll fall asleep faster with the sound of my voice,

Or whether it'll be with each breath that you take,

Or perhaps just drifting comfortably asleep to the story as it plays out in the background.

And so you can have a sense of sitting on a beach,

And it's a warm,

Comfortable beach with golden sand,

Clear blue sea,

And the sun setting in the distance over the ocean.

And while you rest there,

Sitting on that sand,

Gazing out over the sea,

You can hear the water lapping on the shore.

And as the sun continues to set while the water laps gently on the shore,

You can notice the way that the sunlight twinkles and reflects and sparkles on the surface of the water,

Adding some oranges and reds to that deep blue.

And in the opposite direction to the sun,

You can notice how the sky is beginning to go dark,

Almost like an inky darkness,

And how as that sky is going dark,

So you can notice the odd star in the sky,

The odd planet coming into view while the sun sets.

And while the sun sets,

You can begin to feel tired and sleepy,

And relaxing down onto that sand,

Finding that there's something about the sound of waves rolling on the shore,

Something about the setting sun,

The calming sound of birds as the birds calm down for the night,

The sight of stars and planets appearing in the sky.

And noticing that it's a moonless sky,

So as the sun sets,

So you can begin to notice the Milky Way coming more into view,

Stretching across the sky,

Looking almost dusty and mottled with stars.

And noticing the odd meteor that seems to fizz across the sky as you gaze up and drift comfortably asleep.

And while you drift comfortably asleep,

So you start to dream.

And as you start to dream,

Time seems to take on its own meaning.

And you drift deeper into that dream.

While in the background,

The sea gently lashes on the shore.

The breeze gently tickles your face.

And the sand still feels warm from the day's sun.

And as morning begins to approach,

So the sun starts rising again.

And while the sun rises,

It warms your face.

And the birds begin to wake up.

You can hear them more.

And it's interesting the way that awareness shifts.

And one minute,

You're unaware of the sea,

Of that lapping water on the shore,

Having been asleep.

And then gradually,

Your attention orients to the world around you.

And you start to notice that sea that a moment ago,

You didn't notice.

And you start to have that kind of coming around on that beach feeling.

And as you awaken on that beach,

You look forward to the day ahead.

And you don't know what this day will bring.

All you know is that you're going to enjoy the day and take an adventure.

And so as the sun rises,

And darkness disappears,

You begin to walk around on that sand,

Feeling the sand beneath your feet.

Hearing the sound of each footstep.

Noticing the difference in that sand as you walk towards the edge of the water.

Noticing that it goes from soft and powdery,

Having some water in it and becoming kind of squishy under your feet.

Noticing that when you step on the sand,

An area of clear sand,

An area of the water runs away from it.

And some light sand is beneath your foot,

Where dark,

Damp sand once was.

And you notice how some slightly frothy seawater flows in over your feet,

Tickling your feet with the bubbles before pulling back out to sea again.

And you walk down to a boat.

And you have to swim a little bit out to get into the boat.

And it's your boat.

It's what you came to this island in.

To get some peace.

To have your sanctuary,

Your calmness,

Your space and time.

And on the boat,

You begin to travel out to sea a little bit away from the shore.

And the sound of the water at the shore calms down into the distance.

And after a while of travelling out further into the sea,

You can notice the island in the distance,

Near the horizon.

And you shut off the boat's motors and sit in the boat and just enjoy the silence.

Enjoying the silence of just the water lapping against the boat.

A slight breeze on your face,

The warmth of the sun.

And then you can hear a loud splash,

Followed not long after by a powerful outbreath sound.

As you notice a humpback whale has surfaced near the boat.

And you gaze over at the humpback whale,

You go over to the edge of the boat.

And you just take a moment to enjoy watching that humpback whale swimming gracefully near the boat.

You notice the humpback whale turns slightly on its side.

And you can see into its eye.

Notice it looking back at you.

And you can feel its consciousness.

You can feel its curiosity.

You can feel a connection.

As you gaze into each other's eyes.

Almost like there's an understanding somehow between you.

And the humpback whale swims down under the boat and surfaces the other side of the boat.

And you notice the way the movement of the water happens while the whale swims.

And the different sounds of that water.

And you decide that you want to go in that water with the whale.

You get into your scuba diving equipment.

The whale is just waiting there,

Swimming around as if it wants you to go in the water.

You get into your scuba diving equipment.

You go to the back of your boat.

You make sure your boat's anchored.

You make sure you let someone know where you are,

What you're up to.

And you drop backwards off the boat into the water.

And as you splash down on the water,

You can feel that water around your body.

And instantly notice the weightlessness compared to when you're on the boat in all this scuba gear.

And you notice how you're bobbing up and down gently on the waves.

And you can see the whale just a little way away from you.

And now you're in the water.

You notice that the whale has noticed you.

And the whale is coming over towards you.

And you feel a slight sense of excitement as that whale comes over to you.

And seems to reach out with a fin towards you.

And you touch the fin and notice the solidity of that fin.

The smoothness,

The feeling of the fin.

And only now you're in the water do you notice the true size of the whale and appreciate the size of the whale.

And the whale turns to face the same direction as you.

Moves up close next to you,

Almost as if it's got you under one of its fins.

And you hold on to its fin.

You release some air from your jacket.

And begin to lower under the water.

And as you lower under the water,

So you can feel that water rising up around you.

Noticing that water as it rises up across your mask.

Notice how the sound changes from surface sounds to underwater sounds.

And the sounds of bubbles as you breathe out deeper and more comfortably.

And as you begin to go on a journey with that whale.

And the whale seems to be taking good care of you.

It seems hyper attentive.

It seems to know how to look after you.

But it seems to also want to take you somewhere and show you something.

And so you hold on to that whale's fin.

You do the odd kick with your feet.

With your flippers on just to help yourself.

Keep up with that whale without having to hold on too hard.

As the whale dives down deeper and deeper.

And you know you're safe.

You feel so calm and comfortable.

You find that this feels like the most natural experience you could have.

Being at one with nature.

Being at one with this whale.

Exploring this underwater world.

And while you dive down deeper with that whale.

So you notice how the water begins to get darker and darker.

It seemed totally clear.

Almost like glass at the surface.

And yet despite its clarity the light can only penetrate so far.

So the deeper you dive the darker it gets.

And you feel comfortable diving deeper with this whale.

You don't yet know where the whale is taking you.

You just have curiosity and excitement.

You just wonder.

And sound begins to disappear.

Everything becomes really quiet.

Apart from the occasional sound from the whale calling out.

And the whale's movements seem so slow and graceful.

And yet you have this feeling like you're moving really fast.

But the deeper you go the harder it is to get perspective on how fast you're going.

All you know is you're going deeper and deeper.

And after a while of diving down deeper you start to notice what looks like just a faint glow off in the distance.

And it looks like glowing down on the seabed.

And the seabed appears to be what you would assume is probably white sand.

With what looks like tall rock faces jutting out of the sand.

Stretching high up into the ocean.

And the rock faces are dark compared to that white sand.

But deep down here everything just has a blue tinge.

A dark blue tinge.

And the whale seems to be guiding you down towards whatever that light is.

And as you dive down deeper and deeper with this whale,

So you begin to notice that the structure,

Whatever this is,

Looks man-made.

And yet it's all this way under the water.

It looks kind of like a stepped pyramid.

And you're curious who could have built a stepped pyramid all this way under the water.

And if it was built before this area was underwater,

How many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago was it built?

Whatever the answer,

It's curious.

And the whale takes you all the way to the entrance to this pyramid.

And at the entrance is a path that has some sand over it.

And yet it just looks like if you swept the path,

It wouldn't take much to clear it.

And have a stone path going into the pyramid.

And at the entrance to the pyramid,

There's what looks like a candle or a torch on either side with a flame in it.

And yet it's deep underwater.

So you don't know what's powering the flames,

How the flames are managing to look like fire.

They kind of look like fire,

But they don't.

They look like a curious kind of fire because they're underwater.

And the whale stops near the pyramid.

And you swim away from the whale and start to make your way into that pyramid.

And as you enter the pyramid,

You notice there's a door.

And it's a huge stone door.

You don't know how you're going to get through this door or what will be on the other side.

You don't even know whether you should explore this pyramid,

But your curiosity gets the better of you.

And so you look around in the entrance area for some kind of a switch,

Some kind of a way of opening this door.

And you see a hole in the wall.

And you don't know whether you should put your arm in or not,

But you can't find any other switches.

And you can't see into the hole.

And so apprehensively,

You put your arm into the hole and you find a lever.

And you grasp that lever.

You pull on that lever.

And suddenly,

You hear a loud noise and that stone door shifts upwards out the way.

And as it does,

So you get sucked into the pyramid.

And that stone door shifts upwards out the way.

And as it does,

So you get sucked into the pyramid.

With the water that you're in.

And then just after you're sucked into the pyramid,

The door starts closing again and shuts behind you.

Plunging you into darkness.

And then you hear a loud noise.

As another door opens and the water starts draining away.

And as that other door opens,

So you notice light entering from under the door.

And that stone door raises up and the light gets brighter and the water gets shallower.

And you find that this was a bit like an airlock.

Yet you don't know who built it.

Because if this was built while it was on land,

Hundreds of thousands of years ago,

They wouldn't have needed to build an airlock like this.

Because they would never have known it would last long enough to end up underwater or that it would even end up underwater.

There's no way they could know something like that.

So you're curious,

Who built this temple?

Who built this pyramid?

And you walk out of the airlock section.

And into the pyramid.

And find a vast entrance chamber.

And find a vast entrance chamber.

And the water from the airlock section that's just drained out into the pyramid.

Seems to be draining down channels in the bottom of the ground.

Flowing away somewhere.

And you assume that somehow,

Maybe,

It's channeling it back outside.

But you don't know how that could happen.

But none of this makes sense,

Really,

Anyway.

You think if someone built this underwater like this,

They probably know what they're doing.

And as you walk into the pyramid,

Into this entrance chamber,

You realise that flopping along with your fins on your feet,

Wearing your face mask and scuba gear,

And feeling all heavy with the tank on your back,

Just isn't going to help you explore very well.

You take the tank off your back and you take your scuba gear off.

So you're just in your wetsuit.

And you leave it here next to the entrance.

You don't know yet what the way out is.

But you feel calm and comfortable with that idea.

You know that everything seems to be working fine so far.

And so it shall be at the end.

And so it shall be at the end.

You're more interested in the fact you're seeing something no one has ever seen before.

And if they have,

They haven't seen it for thousands of years.

And the lights were on.

So you wonder if anyone's home.

On some level you feel like no one's here.

And that the lights have been on for thousands and thousands of years.

And the lights are just torches,

Little flames,

Flickering and dancing light on the stone walls.

And you notice symbols around the walls and you can't work out whether they're a form of Egyptian or Mayan or something else.

And every footstep you take,

You can hear echoing as your bare feet walk around on that stone.

And the stone is heavily polished.

And you notice the dancing light on the walls from the torches.

And you start having an explore.

While making sure that you're aware of your bearings,

You're aware of which way to go to get back to where you came from.

And you wish that you had a camera on you.

And you wish that you had a camera on you.

Something to record this experience.

You think maybe you can have this experience again in the future.

And so you walk into a chamber.

And notice ancient scrolls.

And that they all look like they have different types of writing.

As if they're scrolls from around the world,

Perhaps from ancient civilizations.

As if this was a secret library of knowledge.

As if somehow someone had been gathering up scrolls from different civilizations as they roamed around the world.

And stored them all here.

Where they'd be safe.

Then as you continue exploring,

So you discover what looks like a golden door.

And in the middle of that golden door is a gap that looks like a stone or something belongs there.

And you try and open that door and you can't seem to do it.

The door doesn't open.

And you work out that maybe to open that door,

You need to place that stone in that gap.

But you don't know what the stone looks like or where it may be.

All you know is a rough idea of its size.

You know that it's about the size of a fist.

And so you continue exploring.

You continue to look at the writing and the pictures on the walls.

You find the flickering light somehow hypnotic of the candles.

And you're still curious how they've burned for thousands of years.

And you stumble upon a room full of thousands of scrolls.

All rolled up.

All on hundreds of shelves around the walls.

And something about this place means that none of them seem dusty.

None of them seem like they've degraded in any way.

They seem as new as if someone had just picked them up yesterday and placed them on these shelves.

You get a few of the scrolls down.

You try and have a look at them.

See if there's anything that makes sense.

You notice some of them contain pictures.

You can have an idea of those pictures even if you can't understand the writing.

You can notice that some of the pictures seem to be of animals that you know are extinct.

There's some with pictures of plants and herbs and trees.

But you don't know if these are showing things just to let you know what they are or telling you something else.

And you find some books that have pictures in that seem to have lists of words and so you wonder whether maybe those are medicinal books teaching how to mix different things together for healing.

And then in one room a small door opens.

It seems to be an insignificant room.

There's nothing really in it.

Just a little plinth and on that plinth is a red glowing stone highly polished about the size of a fist.

You wonder whether that stone is the one you're after.

You take that stone off the plinth find your way back to that golden door and with a sense of excitement of curiosity of wonder about what's going to happen next you place that stone into the space in the door and it's almost like the stone somehow had a magnet inside it like when it was really close to the door it just seemed to suck into the door and stick there with a jolt and then suddenly you hear movement grinding sounds like stone moving and then this huge golden door raises up into the ceiling revealing the most beautiful room you've ever seen and in this room there's some books that appear to be bound unlike all the other books which just look like scrolls and they're ornate and they look like someone has taken great care to look after them and to make them the way they are and you open a book that's on a stand in front of you you start turning through the pages and as you do you notice there's something strange about this book from the images in the book you can tell that it seems to be about aliens or space travel and as you turn the pages you see a page with what looks like a star system you recognize that it's our own solar system you recognize that the highlighted planet is the third one from the sun which must be Earth and as you continue turning the pages you recognize that that solar system seems to be marked in an image with other dots on the page and in relation to those other dots as if to imply that somehow it's like a map of the local part of the galaxy saying this is where you are and then as you turn the pages you find a picture that has what was on that map much smaller in part of a larger picture you recognize the pattern and you see that in this much,

Much larger picture where the pattern for the local cluster the pattern for the Earth and Moon and the solar system is really small and you notice that there's something else highlighted on that picture and you guess that must be a star a long way away and you start to wonder whether maybe whoever left this book came from that star or somewhere around it and you keep turning the pages and you see images of what looks like modern day craft it doesn't resemble space shuttles it doesn't resemble images of UFOs but it does look like images of some kind of spacecraft and then you turn a page and feel a sense of shock as you see something looking back at you from the page and you feel that shock because it was unexpected that looking back at you is a drawing of some kind of being and it doesn't look like the aliens that are drawn in science fiction but it does look slightly human-like or humanoid it has front facing eyes and it's got a human-like face to some extent but it doesn't look human and you keep turning the pages with curiosity,

With wonder and you don't know what any of the writing says but there's lots of pictures as if somehow they were assuming that the people who read it would need to be able to understand it on some level even if they couldn't understand the writing and that maybe people could figure out the writing through pattern recognition and through different processes and with curiosity you carry on going through the book and it seems to start to tell a story about these aliens coming to Earth about these aliens just overseeing what's going on on Earth just gathering knowledge and information about these aliens trying to blend in and getting scrolls from all around the world to store the knowledge that was springing up around the world and they inadvertently shared some of their knowledge about pyramid building about creating structures that would last out of the basic technologies that were available at the time and it looked like they'd created this place as a safe way of recording all this knowledge and storing this knowledge knowing they can come back here any time and you wonder whether they're still around still observing whether there are any other places like this around the world you wish that you could take these things with you when you leave but you know you can't because none of these would survive underwater and you're not even sure if you'd be able to find this place again yourself because no one has obviously ever found it before you carry on exploring and you walk up some stairs with high vaulted corridors walking up higher and higher into this pyramid and you enter a room in what seems like the middle of the pyramid and right in the middle is glowing blue water a square pool of glowing blue water and you see a sign next to it of pictures that seem to imply that somehow this is healing and you walk over to that water and you walk down into the water and it's lukewarm,

It's comfortable it's glowing a fluorescent blue you sit down into that water you breathe in a fragrance that seems to clear your nose and while you relax back in that water your eyes begin to shut and as they shut so a beam of healing light seems to emanate up from the water as if it's healing you travelling into your body filling your head working down from your head through your neck to your shoulders and that healing light is moving down through your shoulders down your back down your stomach down to your legs and with every out breath you take that healing light seems to penetrate into you comfortably and move down through you deeper and deeper healing every cell in your body stimulating the healing response within you reducing inflammation within you triggering neurogenesis the building of new neurons with wonder and excitement with each out breath that you take and you feel that happening through your mind and body and I don't know if it feels like a tingling or a warmth or a coolness but you feel that happening as you relax in that water and then once all that healing is done in that healing light almost in an instant the light turns off and you open your eyes in that water and you feel calm and comfortable and you feel like the healing has happened and you know the healing will continue so you climb out of the water and you decide that it must be time to go back to that whale you walk back through the pyramid all the way back to the entrance you get your scuba gear back on and as you touch that stone door the door seems to just magically open for you and then you walk into that airlock section the door shuts behind you you make sure your scuba gear is working fine as the door in front of you opens and the water starts flooding in at your feet filling up the airlock and you swim out and you see that whale still swimming there just gently circling around you swim over to the whale hold on to the whale's fin as the whale swims gently guiding you back up towards your boat and you breathe calmly and carefully you can hear each breath you take you can hear the bubbles of air as you very very slowly are ascending through the water very slowly and carefully ascending through that water back towards your boat and then you reach the surface and realise that the sun has moved significantly across the sky and that it's now evening and the sun will be setting again soon and you feel a sense of curiosity because it means that perhaps that whale had swam away and somehow come back just in time,

Knowing you're about to exit because it wouldn't have been able to be there that long you wonder what it was about being down there that altered your time was it being in that pool of healing light was it reading that book was it exploring you wonder what it was that made time seem to disappear and you pulled up your anchor and the whale slapped its fin on the water as if to say goodbye and you then rode your boat back to shore and went back on shore you pitched up a tent set up a bed made a little campfire had something to eat watched the sun setting watched a slither of moon rising in the sky and all the stars heard the water sloshing on the shore felt the cool breeze on your skin watched the way the flames from your fire danced against the sand and then rested down in your tent on this beach and drifted comfortably and relaxed asleep