I practiced Buddhist-style mediation once, pretty seriously, every day for about 10 years. Given my spiritual hangups, I entered into the process as an intellectual exercise, wanting to know what I could discover personally about consciousness and universal oneness.

After a few years, I learned how to dissociate and experience consciousness differently, diffusely, not through a lens of I-ness. (Well, I leaned how to sometimes do that, it’s not an easy state to achieve.)

During those moments, I could remember Lenny through the experiences we had shared together, and I could communicate with him, because without the illusion of self, the boundaries of time and space between us held no meaning.

This is one way of speaking with the dead, I suppose. In a deep meditative state, it feels entirely ordinary.

I feel as if I recognize some of your own experiences reflected in mine.