Cassandra W

Tori Allenspach

Asheville, NC, USA

Practice candle gazing to soften your gaze, embrace fluidity, and find peace within the constant dance of change.

English

Immerse yourself in the gentle glow of candle gazing: an open-eye meditation to sooth the mind and clarify the soul. This simple form of meditation helps foster acceptance and soften into the present with each drip of wax, flicker of flame, and twist of smoke.

A Practice Of Accepting Change: Candle Gazing Meditation

Welcome to a candle gazing meditation. Perhaps you're finding this on a soft morning or a cold evening. Wherever you are, knowing that it is already perfect, go ahead and find your candle and your match. And just taking a moment before lighting the candle to hold these materials in your palms, these ancient tools that revolutionized humanity, regardless of how they have shifted and changed with time and technology. Taking another moment now to choose just a one word intention to bring in to this space, this meditation today. Whatever comes up first is also perfect. And with that intention, lighting the candle, setting the wick ablaze in its pure form, this beautiful element that holds boundless potential in this one steady flame. You're welcome to hold the candle or place it just beyond whatever feels comfortable and safe to you today. Start to allow yourself to soften the eyes, just gazing at the entire candle, stop searching, releasing all those tiny little muscles around and in the eye, releasing the eye from this need to search and find, noticing the back and forth movement, if even just for a moment before the muscles pick back up. Just constantly relaxing the eyes, moving your attention now to look at the wick. Staying steady to focus on something tangible, something unchanging and still with that soft gaze, holding the wick, noticing the texture, noticing the color, noticing the shape. Perhaps you start to notice that your eyes want to move, want to reach, want to hold something else other than just the wick. Perhaps there's a desire to try to focus instead on the dancing flame, as advised for your attention over and over again with every swift yet fluid change, trying to focus on the steadiness, while noticing that often our systems are instead enraptured by the change, the dance, the thing overtly waving in our face instead of that undercurrent that's steady and similar to the steadiness of the wick, but with subtle yet present, letting your attention go to the melting wax as it pools around the wick in this little candle environment. To the candle, this melting wax is a big event, reshaping everything, and to us, the outsider looking in, it can feel almost imperceptible at times, though logically we know it's there. How do you notice your mind holding the wax? What do you notice about where your mind settles, where your heart reaches, and gently moving your attention now to the flame directly, allowing yourself to sit with the flame, to hold the flame, maybe noticing how difficult that feels with this constant, overt, quick change. Maybe you notice a desire to catalog the flame, noticing the shape, the color, the rhythm the dance, the warmth. Perhaps you start to notice that even with all of that cataloging, all of those pieces are still subject to change, and constantly are, even under your watch, even under your cataloging. The second you catalog the gradient of color it shifts, the moment that you notice the light as it reflects on the wax, the shadow changes, and right as you think you understand the tempo of the dance, the rhythm changes again. Beyond the cataloging, beyond this desire to create, to make structure out of fluidity, I challenge you to soften into the present even more, again relaxing all the tiny muscles around the eyes, again letting the muscles of the eyes relax too, again experimenting with what it feels like to allow the eyes to stop searching. Open. Did you feel that? Noticing the moment that you soften and open so much so that you're present with the flame as it continues to dance. Nothing needing to be held or cataloged or understood, but just experienced. And perhaps also noticing when the desire to hold, to catalog, to create structure around what it is that you are perceiving gets in the way of the present, adds a veil of perception between you and the moment and that iteration of the flame. And when you hold, when you catalog, when you create structure around something that is built to not be held and to always change, the moment disappears. And often we end up missing the moment after that too until we find our presence again, this raw experiencing through relaxation, through opening, through softening to what's here. What is the flame already teaching you? What lesson are you here to hold and soften again and soften again? Knowing that the flame is always here to support you in softening into the present. Knowing that the wax is always here to remind you of that steady undercurrent of change. Knowing that the wick is always here, holding you in your own steadiness. As everything else continues to dance, to change, to shift. And you can stay here with the flame as long as you'd like. And whenever this feels complete to you, taking a moment to circle back to that intention. Holding that intention as you gently blow the candle out. Enjoying a moment with the smoke. That trail that dances just as fiercely as the flame with just an ounce more evidence of its past. This different yet nonetheless holy dance. An ancient trail with a whisper of what once was. Fleeting evidence, the magic that could be because of what has already been. Thank you to the light within. Thank you to this day beyond. See you next time.