I did not expect my yoga and meditation retreat to turn into my own funeral today. I sat down for a simple candle flame meditation, eyes soft, spine straight, breath steady. The task was innocent enough. Gaze at the flame. Stay present. Let the mind settle.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, tears started rolling down my cheeks. Inside, a scene unfolded with brutal clarity. I was at a cremation ground. I was the one being cremated.
The fire, the wood and the empty crowd
In my vision, there were pieces of wood below me and above me. I could almost smell the smoke that was about to rise. I was lying there, ready to be offered to the fire. There was no fear in that moment, only a quiet recognition. This is how the story of the body ends.
What shocked me was not the fire. It was the crowd.
I was looking, from inside the scene, to see who had come to my cremation. Who would show up for my final goodbye? A strange curiosity took over. Would there be family, friends, students, colleagues, people I had tried so hard to impress?
And in that imagination, there was almost no one.
No wailing relatives. No emotional speeches. No long queue of people saying how deeply they would miss me. Just fire, wood and the silent sky.
Candle flame meditation as a mirror
Candle flame meditation looks simple from the outside. A flame, a still body, a quiet room. On the inside, it behaves like a mirror that has lost its politeness. The mind, softened by single-pointed focus, begins to reveal what hides under our daily noise.
For me today, that mirror showed the fear of dying unseen. Not the fear of death itself, but the fear of insignificance. It was as if the subconscious whispered, “You are building a life that might still end in an empty cremation ground.”
Psychologically, such images are not random. Candle flame meditation slows brain waves, allows old material to surface, and makes it harder to distract myself with social media, emails, or busy schedules. The mind finally has the courage to show me what it has been trying to say for years.
Who am I living for
As I watched the imaginary version of my own cremation, a painful question came up. Who am I really living for?
I spend so much time trying to be seen. Posting, performing, pleasing. Collecting likes, titles and achievements, as if life were an extended audition and everyone else is on the judging panel. Somewhere, I quietly assumed that if I did enough, my funeral would be full.
The empty cremation exposed that fantasy. It reminded me that a crowded life does not always translate into a meaningful one. The mind in candle flame meditation today stripped away my audience and asked a rude but necessary question. If no one comes in the end, was your life still worth living?
It is a confronting thought that also brings surprising freedom. If the final scene might be empty, then I am released from performing for the crowd. I get to live for truth rather than applause.
The yogi’s uncomfortable friend, named death
As someone who aspires to be a yogi, I keep reading that death should be a teacher, not an enemy. It sounds poetic on social media. It feels very different when the teacher walks into your meditation and lies down on the pyre in your place.
Yet this is precisely what many traditional practices suggest. Candle flame meditation is a doorway into more profound awareness of impermanence. Real yogic life is not just perfect postures and pretty sunsets beside the Ganga. It is also the raw willingness to sit with the fact that this body will burn one day and that no one can accompany me into that fire.
From a psychological lens, staying with this reality can reduce anxiety rather than increase it. Instead of running from death, the mind learns to walk beside it. When I picture my own cremation, I am quietly training myself to loosen my grip on control, reputation and possessions.
The truth about “no one showed up”
The most haunting part of my vision was the phrase “no one was there”. But as I stayed with the image, something softer emerged. Was it really that no one cared, or was it that the scene was stripped to reveal the only relationship that never leaves? My relationship with consciousness itself.
The ego wants a crowd at the cremation. The soul, if I may use that word, wants something else. It wants authenticity while I am still alive. It wants me to show up fully for my own life, instead of outsourcing my sense of worth to whoever claps the loudest.
In that sense, the “empty” cremation was not empty at all. The watcher was there. Awareness was there. In candle flame meditation, I was being asked, very directly, “If this awareness is the only companion you are guaranteed, how are you treating it today?”
How this meditation is changing the way I live
When the practice ended, the teacher asked us to close our eyes and notice the afterimage of the flame. Mine was not just a gentle glow. It was a funeral pyre, a mirror, and a wake-up call all at once.
I came away with a few quiet resolutions, not forced, but naturally arising from what I had seen. I want relationships that are less about performance and more about presence. I want work that would still feel worthwhile even if no one ever wrote a grand eulogy about it. I want to keep using candle flame meditation as a way to clean the dust off my priorities.
Most of all, I want to die, one day, without the heavy regret that I lived for the wrong audience. Whether the cremation ground is full or empty, I would like to meet that fire with a simple inner sentence. I showed up for my life.
A small invitation from the flame
If you are reading this, perhaps something in you is also tired of living only for the scoreboard of approval. You do not have to travel to a yoga and meditation retreat to face it, although the mountains do make it harder to pretend. You can sit with a candle flame wherever you are, breathe, and let the mind show you its hidden movies.
You might not see your own cremation. You might see old heartbreak, unfinished grief, or the quiet joy you keep postponing. Whatever appears, treat it as the flame treating the wick. It is burning only what no longer needs to be carried.
Candle flame meditation, used sincerely, is not a relaxation trick. It is a brave practice for those who are willing to ask the hardest question. If no one comes to my cremation, can I still say that I truly lived?
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