Story of Awakening: Maxim Odintsov

Since my early childhood, I was hardly interested in something that is called the meaning of life. Only at about the age of 15 or 16 I began to understand that everything surrounding me at that time was absolutely not interesting to me. I didn’t know how to deal with my life and actually I didn’t care about it at all. There was nothing unusual in my life because that was me, who wasn’t present in it. That made me sink into a deep depression that lasted for more than 10 years.

Obviously from time to time I reached out of that misery and pretended like everything was just fine. I turned into a person who was wearing “I feel good” mask. I used it so often that even I started to believe that it was the real me.

In fact, everything at home was really great even too great. Everyone who knew me back then would say so. Quite frankly, it was too much for me as I needed more sincerity and independence. When it got to the point when I could not take that kind of goodness anymore I just left for Minsk. There were many other reasons for leaving but now I know that the main one was the desire for freedom, the desire to be independent in life and not to depend on anything.

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By the age of 18 I had reached some kind of a peak when I said to myself that now everything was absolutely uninteresting to me even my own life. Quite by chance I came across a book that helped me to reconsider my view of life. It was a book by a learner of Elena Blavatsky. It was the beginning of my conscious search. It gave a different look on life but since it couldn’t be applied to myself somehow I continued to sink in my depression wearing a mask of a good neutral person. It really pissed me off and made me angry. Together with that I’ve learned how to suppress all aggression inside me easily and, by my own ignorance, I was really pleased about it.

The changes in my condition could be easily traced by looking at the bands I listened to at that time. Started with soft Russian rock gradually approaching death metal with elements of suicidal screams, harsh vocals and firing percussion. It was a complete reflection of my condition. Somehow I was starting to like dissected bodies stained in blood, crawling organs and exposed bones. I found myself in a movie. It’s called «Faces of Death». I got a lot of pleasure looking at the real suicide records, where a man shoots himself in the mouth with a bullet. I liked blood and autopsies, fatal accidents and any heresy that is simply inhuman and that completely denies the value of life.

In my head this propaganda of death only made me feel worse. I walked away, ran away wherever I could so no one would see me but coming back I was wearing my “mask” again.

But that book sprouted. A few months later I read somewhere about the possibility of out-of-body experiences. That was a salvation. I said I’d get out of that body by all means. I was eager to see what would be next after that. I was absolutely not interested in anything and I was ready to leave this body for something new and probably more valuable that I had not noticed in myself, my family, and my environment.

I succeeded and for a whole month my aspiration was to realize myself during the day as deeply as possible so that at night I did not fall asleep but remained vigilant and was able to switch to a subtle level.

At that time it was called astral.

I was sinking deeper and deeper through various techniques that I found on the Internet, through starvation, and of course, concealment from society and complete isolation.

At the moment when I got out of that body for the first time, my world collapsed. I was convinced that a more subtle world exists simultaneously.

I began to practice even harder and it gave me at least some motivation to live and to show interest in it. I searched for other techniques and sources. I read a lot of Blavatskaya’s books, Eastern philosophy, religious and spiritual literature. At the same time I practiced all of that but I was not satisfied with just reading about it. I had to experience it on my own. In order to achieve my satisfaction I used everything that was coming across my way and somehow resonated with me.

My meditations got modified during many years until one night I came to the very essence of it, a simple awareness, non-involvement, just being at the moment. I practiced it until I opened an inner space within me where I could go and stay as long as I wanted to. But as soon as I was coming out of meditation I was getting back to that gray and worthless “good life” of mine.

Finally, I got fed up with it and I decided to commit a suicide. Not many people had heard about it because I’ve never told anyone. Usually those who talk a lot about it are people who demand attention. They like to shout out about their suicidal motives. But those who really want to do it keep it to themselves until the very last moment.

Although I would prefer not to mention it here I can only say that the experience and the realization that with the death of the body nothing really ends trampled me even more into this filth of lifeless existence.

Fortunately, I found on a network teachings of Kim Michaels. It really was a new step toward life and out of the long-term suicidal and depressive swamp. I practiced this teaching all day for 5 years from morning up till night, giving all of myself, striving to make a reality out of this teaching in my life, in my actions, words and views.

Through that practice I discovered the saving presence of bliss inside my heart. It remains with me up till today although through many past years I could open it only for several minutes or days. At that moment it became a part of my being. It gave me the light in my own life. Wherever I was it was with me and I experienced this bliss inside of me for a year or more until I broke up with a loved one. With her leaving, she took all the pain away from me and I remained within inner stillness. Only this thin thread of bliss was connecting me with this world although, I have to confess, it was not that easy. And yet I filled that void with the light that came from a subtle energy of my heart.

A few weeks later the burning phase of search began. I had to find THAT or die. I knew I needed a teacher. I wanted to find “unity” immediately, right away, no matter what. So when I was invited to a meeting and I was told about the team and the Teacher, I deeply felt the flow of vitality that came from these guys. And 2 or 3 days later I already begun my one month training. And a month or two later I went to the retreat to study with Genadiy Givin. For sure, my brain exploded from the practical part of the retreat. It was boiling. At one point it was an absolute disappointment about myself and life in general. At that moment I said to myself that since I had nothing out of this training so god-damn let it be as it was.

So the disappointment was gone and I wandered to the last group meditation. That night I went to bed in the total presence of the stillness within me. It seemed to me as something was very unusual. I had never experienced such a thing but at those moments it was really the absolute world. At night I fell into the void. It was nothing. I was not there and even understanding of it wasn’t there. A complete failure just like an abyss. Next morning when I woke up, I noticed that everything was different, magical, filled with sparkling beauty. Everything came back to life. I saw myself in this as a part of IT. The whole world was within me and at the same time That something was superior to me from which everything appears, which is the foundation of any form, matter, buildings, air, water, space, my being.

Here it was the Stillness that the Teacher was telling about at the retreat. There was nothing but that Stillness. It was freedom, real freedom just to be. Everything that was unnecessary and far-fetched was gone. All the mental junk was gone. All the fantasies evaporated in a second. Pain and suffering disappeared and got replaced by silence, which was always present, so alive and unknown.

For a year I was wandering around in this condition until I began to notice something called “enlightened stink”. Now I am absolutely grateful to people who pulled me out of it. This can be seen in almost any person who has recently undergone such transformations. A year later, a new discovery took place during our autumn retreat and it was just another awakening. Everything before that had no strength or weight. It opened a completely different space, experience, awareness of the real nature. I realized that enlightenment does not have its parking spot. That process does not stop. Life goes on and continues to unfold.

To answer the question “What did it give me?” I can just say that it is freedom to be.

I felt myself completed. Wherever I focus on, I see my own body, the way it speaks, sits or moves. When I type a message it seems that I look at myself from out the phone as I do it. The whole space looks at the body and at the same time the body also looks back at the space. Everything exists as a space looking at itself. It’s something perfect, timeless. Somewhere deep inside, something was clinging to the point of view of my body as if it resisted seeing itself from another body.

It’s an experience of self communication of the space by itself gradually erased all boundaries. If awakening is the silence and stillness then now it is the universal silence and stillness. The cosmos itself and its vacuum rests in my body, in my volume. Something infinite rests in me. In the depths of this there have never been waves, bursts, everything rests and is the presence is always silent. It is beyond happiness and unhappiness. Something that turns and sees itself comes out of this silent presence. I don’t know if we need meditations or not. Time is a meditation itself, the being is a meditation, movement is a meditation. I know nothing more, there is nothing to know, nothing to understand. There is only a flow of electricity coming through my body, divine body of my planet that is infinite and at the same time, so little body of the Cosmos.

What can be more beautiful than the birth of life or stars? Meditation has become kind of a black hole, sucking my mind into Nothing. What how can I reply to you, my reader, to an absolutely selfish question “What did it give me?”. I can only say that it is Something that radiates a glow, it is the beginning of electricity, the beginning of light, the beginning of time and space. I can only answer that you are my manifestation, my word, my smile and my dream. It is the greatest mystery of life, so perfect and so unknown.