What happens if I gaze upwards?

I returned to the exper­i­ment tonight, hav­ing lost interest in it a few months ago. This is noth­ing new, because with this par­tic­u­lar exper­i­ment it always hap­pens that I sud­denly get the idea in my head — think­ing it’s affect­ing me, mov­ing me, allow­ing me a little glimpse of my soul — and chase it for a while, before my ded­ic­a­tion inev­it­ably falters.

I delib­er­ately arrive a couple of minutes late, once every­one is already seated, and place myself care­fully at the edge of the group. I don’t want to be noticed. I espe­cially don’t want to be wel­comed and have to respond to friendly ques­tions with a thin, watery smile and inane small talk. There, in my glor­i­ous isol­a­tion, I let the hour pass.

I observe the rituals as far as I know them, but much of my time is spent merely fol­low­ing like a lost sheep. This is the part where every­one stands, isn’t it? And so this must be the part where every­one sits, right? I’ve got it now. I don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, after all.

Even­tu­ally, how­ever, my con­cen­tra­tion lapses, and I stay seated as every­one else car­ries on leap­ing up and down at irreg­u­lar inter­vals. To any­one glan­cing over at me, I’m appar­ently lost in thought.

But no, the only thing I’m lost in is the candle­light. I’m con­vinced that some answer, some rev­el­a­tion, must be lurk­ing in the centre of that flick­er­ing flame. It’ll come to me if I stare hard enough, I know it will.

Of course, the answer doesn’t come. It never has, even though I’ve fixed my eyes on more flick­er­ing candles than I care to think about. Yet just the act of gaz­ing into a sol­it­ary flame still proves remark­ably reassuring.

I try con­cen­trat­ing again, con­vin­cing myself that I can hear a voice — a voice that’s clear, author­it­at­ive, caring, calm­ing and unwaver­ing. I know that this seems like a lot to ask from a single voice, but if that’s what we’re here for then I demand a few obvi­ous char­ac­ter­ist­ics before I can believe that what I’m hear­ing is indeed real. So why is it that as soon as I think I can hear this voice speak­ing to me, oth­ers crowd in on the same wavelength and cause inter­fer­ence? Who should I be listen­ing to? Who should I trust? It’s all too con­fus­ing. Not for the first time, I real­ise that many — if not all — of the voices I heard were mine.

I slip out before the end, so as to avoid any risk of being cornered and lured in by the softly-spoken words and the over­whelm­ing aura of nice­ness. As ever, I take the long and cir­cuit­ous route home through the local park, and pon­der why I’ve seem­ingly just wasted an hour of my life. I don’t come up with any answers to that ques­tion either, but I do decide that I will return in seven days — same place, same time — and give the exper­i­ment one more last chance.