Learn to Listen – Harold Klemp

   Most people are used to prayers that ask something of God. They are used to telling God, " Do this for me. I want health. My finances aren't going very well; I need wealth."

   Everybody's always telling God what to do. Then they wonder, Does God get sick of listening? Why doesn't God ever do anything?

   If we shut our eyes in contemplation, listen, and wait for God to speak to us, we begin to see how listening is true prayer, prayer of the highest sort. Mostly, true prayer is listening to God.

   It is a whole different approach. Through spiritual exercises and this contemplative effort, we learn to listen to the Voice of God. The Voice of God is the Holy Spirit, which we call the ECK.

   Deboee was a pilot on a DC-9 passenger plane. One day the plane was flying out of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, with a full load of pasengers, and they had an emergency during takeoff. They were headed for Monrovia,Liberia, which was to the west.

   Suddenly there was a violent vibration. The copilot was flying, and Deboee said, "Go with the takeoff." The other choice would have been to abort. This was how the pilots' guidelines read. With the copilot flying, Deboee was very receptive to the Mahanta, to the Inner Master*, and he listened for any guidance that might come. 

   Now followed a series of life-or-death decisions. Deboee kept listening, and in some cases he did absolutely the wrong thing by the book. But it saved everybody's life.

   First was the decision to continue with the takeoff or not, and aborting meant they would have ended up in the sea. And he said,"Lives were saved right there."

   Deboee knew there was a tire problem, so he didn't retract the undercarriage because that would have damaged the hydraulic system. Later, the Abidjan air traffic control center confirmed that they had left part of a tire on the runway. 

   Now came the decision to divert to Accra, in Ghana. This was well to the east. With the undercarriage down, the extra drag meant that there would be too little fuel to reach the original destination of Monrovia. Fuel consumption would have been twice as much, and they would never have made it.

   Then on the way to Accra, the engine on the same side as the burst tire developed an oil leak. The procedure said to shut down the engine. But the plane was overloaded. And with the undercarriage down, there was all this drag.

   The DC-9 has two engines. And if he had shut the engine down, one engine alone  couldn't keep the plane airborne. That would have been it. All lives lost.

   Deboee brought the throttle back to idle just to see what would happen, and the plane lost altitude. So he had to choose here. He brought the throttle back up, pushed it forward, and they regained altitude. They kept flying in spite of the oil leak. And how did Deboee make these decisions? Well, the Mahanta had given him a nudge — had said to do exactly what he'd done. 

   So now came the question: should he announce to the pasengers what kind of stew they're in? And he realized, no, they'd panic, and they already have enough problems.

   He just said, "We've got a tire problem, and we'll be landing at Accra." And the people were very calm. Once the DC-9 was over Accra, it had used up enough fuel to be well within safe landing weight. They shut down the engine with the oil leak, and they made a perfect landing. Everyone was safe. Deboee credited this guidance 100 percent to the Mahanta. Deboee said that just a single wrong decision would have spelled disaster.

   Then he added something very interesting. Deboee drew a parralel to other people who listened to the inner voice. He said Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Handel, Tchaikovsky, to name a few, were all vehicles who listened to this inner guidance and acted. And we are all witness to the result of their listening. We can all hear the results in the music they wrote. Just a beautiful connection.

 

* — An expression of the ECK, or Holy Spirit

 

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