One of the most useful and haunting things I have read lately was in Larry Rosenberg's "Breath by Breath". I mentioned this three weeks ago in the post "Right Now". https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2019/07/right-now.html
A group of Americans went to Korea to practice meditation with Korean monks. They meditated for 50 minutes and walked for 10 out of every hour from 3 AM to 11 PM for 90 days straight. They were upset to learn that this group had the additional tradition of a week of no sleep in the middle of the 90 day period. The leader went to an old priest who had done the whole deal many times. The old man said that the American was carrying the scary concept of a sleepless week in his head. He advised just practicing concentrating on the exact moment at hand, not on fatigue or on achievement or on failure - just the present moment. Concentrating on keeping their minds on the present exact moment got the group through the test of no sleep.
I have long suspected that many short moments of noticing what I am doing and thinking about are more helpful for me and how and where I live than any sort of heroic discipline or trial. Also, I see that nobody can actually hold a week without sleep in their mind. They have a concept of such a week, maybe of the highlights or low lights of what it will be like. They may have memories of specific moments of such a week or impressions of the week or opinions about its value or the way it was conducted.
This is what Eckhart Tolle has been trying to get across to readers like me for years. We make notes and we have memories but reality is only now, not a week ago nor tomorrow. Our minds work in such a way that, coupled with language and sociality, we get in the habit of thinking we know what a week or an hour is, but our actual awarenss is limited to now itself!
