Kind of like a birthday present, the 27th day of the course is relaxation, breath and candle gazing. I really like the candle gazing; I hadn’t done it for a long long time. Darken the room, look at the flame of a candle without moving the eyes or head for about two minutes. Extinguish the flame and close your eyes. You will see the image of the flame. Keep looking upon this image. It will fade every now and then but you will find it again. The colours are amazing, and the image will subtly change over the course of the watching. It seems like a universe away and it seems closer than anything you have ever seen. It’s to aid concentration, but I prefer it as an aid to let go of any concentrating and just see.

Hittleman:

The individual is freed from the terribly confining limitations of what she has heretofore conceived of as me or I and the necessity of protecting the phantom known as the ego.

Krishnamurti:

When we are aware of ourselves, is not the whole movement of living a way of uncovering the me, the ego, the self? The self is a very complex process which can be uncovered only in relationship, in our daily activities, in the way we talk, the way we judge, calculate, the way we condemn others and ourselves. All that reveals the conditioned state of our own thinking, and is it not important to be aware of this whole process?