Much like herds rely on food in their environment and can grow when there is enough food around, yet then shrink because there is less food as they eat it, which causes the food to be able to regrow - this candle setup shows an analog of that phenomenon, where the flame is first large, which causes a lot of wax to melt, which rises the molten wax level, which decreases wick length, making the wax above melt less, which allows the flame to burn through the wax reserve and grow in size, and the feedback loop is complete.

As such, it is an interesting set-up that makes us contemplate the nature of self-awareness. It appears to "know" or "sense" that in order to stay "alive", it needs to back down in size. All the while this is an inevitable causal loop. How does conscious life relate to this?

At the end, I tongue-in-cheekily introduce a fatal external influence to the system, to illustrate the sublime.

see also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_diagram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction