If you think you’re the only one who has had strange dreams that felt like you were awake….literally….you will learn on Sovereign Ability (SA) that you’re not alone. Some of us have had these “experiences almost our entire lifetime. My earliest recollection of what I’ve learned to call an “Event” occurred when I was three.
Making the mistake of asking my parents for help in trying to understand these events was a huge mistake and I quickly learned I was on my own. And, back then (in the 1950’s) I thought I was the only one.
I also learned that this ability doesn’t always present itself when my body was asleep (aka: night time or napping). Sometimes my unseen friends would be near me helping when I needed them most and they wanted me to learn something that I otherwise would not have learned while I was in a conscious state.
What kind of example could this be? I grew up in a poverty stricken family. We were so poor that my mother would make what we wore, raise chickens for extra money selling eggs, and doing other things for the neighbors. There was no way my parents could afford to pay for flying lessons so I could get a pilot’s license.
But, after a few events that led me to the Flint Bishop Airport in Flint, MI, all of that would change and it would change my life forever.
Having exchanged labor for flight lessons at a local flight school, I was finally ready for a simulated Private Pilot checkride. My flight instructor, Boyce Reusagger, was more than an instructor to me. He was a good friend, devoted father of nine, loved his wife dearly, and just happened to be a long-time devoted Roman Catholic.
On December 24th, 1970 at the age of 18, Boyce thought I was ready for the final step in my training before he would recommend that the Federal Aviation Administration representative in our area put me through a thorough verbal and flight test to see if I met FAA requirements to receive a license to fly on my own.
It was 4:00pm (roughly) when we were ready to do the last maneuver, emergency engine out. It had been snowing earlier in southern Michigan and at 2,000 feet the view south of our home airport was all snow covered country.
Boyce pulled the throttle back to idle/cut-off and announced, “You’ve just lost your engine and your restart attempt has failed. What do you do now?”
Given the atmosphere was so silky smooth and visibility was great, I reached for the checklist to follow in preparation for an emergency landing off-airport. While I was looking for that special spot, I noticed a small field not too far ahead that was a single runway, small, in the backyard of what looked like a farmer’s house, and it had a couple of aircraft parked just north of the landing threshold.
We were headed south towards the runway, so I would have to be careful as I approached the runway so I wouldn’t be too low risking striking the parked aircraft.
Boyce said, “Be careful of huge tree to the left of the runway mid-field. We’ll land this time and taxi back for takeoff. The surface wind was light so that wouldn’t be as factor as I was concerned.
Everything was setup so perfectly and the approach was incredibly smooth. I thought, What could go wrong? This feels unusually perfect for some reason. That’s when I noticed a black cable in front of us and it was obvious we would hit it. I had my hand on the throttle and was about to shove it to full power when I felt Boyce’s hand crushing mine attempting to push the throttle through the instrument panel.
“I have control,” Boyce shouted as I felt the nose wheel skip over the the wire. Our main landing gear struck the wire at about 85 knots per hour. The aircraft slowed noticeably and the airspeed indicator continued to drop…..yet we were still flying.
I could feel one side of the line snap followed by loud grinding noises and then suddenly the other side broke free and our airspeed began to accelerate, albeit slowly. Then I heard a voice from behind me quietly say. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
We were able to climb slowly and reached a safe altitude. Instead of going back to the our airport, which had a control tower, we decided to fly a little further north to a small airport at Flushing, MI. My instructor didn’t want to attract any attention with what we were now towing behind us.
As we circled the small, uncontrolled airport, I saw someone run from the only building near the runway, jump into a small 7EC Champ (a small aerobatic aircraft that is a taildragger), and takeoff without using the runway.
The aircraft climbed quickly to our altitude and came up next to us. The pilot contacted us an air-to-air frequency to talk about what we had trailing behind our aircraft. It turns out that we took that electrical line we flew into with us. We had about 150 feet of it caught on our landing gear. There was no way we could land at Flushing because the airport was surrounded by high tension electrical lines. If our wire made contact with those huge lines, we would be vaporized.
Instead, the instructor decided to go back to our airport, declare an emergency, and land. When we checked in with the control tower, though, we were told we would have to use runway 9. The problem with that is that there are high tension lines running north-south about a mile west of the airport and we would have to cross those lines on our final approach course.
Our new friend had followed us home and told the instructor that we shouldn’t worry. Just fly a normal approach, don’t make any sudden moves, and he would fly underneath the line we were carrying. As we approached the high tension lines, he would raise our little challenge with his wings to get us across and then dive away so we could land.
We touched down, but didn’t have any breaks because our surprise gift from our earlier adventure had severed the brake lines on our main struts. So, the crash, fire, and rescue troops drove across the cable trailing us and jerked us to a stop. An amazing feat considering they had been celebrating Christmas early at the office thinking there surely wouldn’t be any aircraft emergencies on Christmas Eve.
The FAA sent an accident investigator to interview us shortly after this accident. We told him everything that happened including the pilot from Flushing who helped us out.
The look on his face was remarkable. He said he had already been told about that and had gone to Flushing to interview the pilot. The owner of the airport said that the airport had been closed on the 24th because of the Christmas holiday. So, no one was there and he didn’t know anything about the airplane that the inspector told him about. But, the control tower at our home airport had something else to say. They had seen the aircraft we spoke of but couldn’t see the aircraft call sign that would have been painted on the side of aircraft. Their attention was directed back to us for a few seconds. But, when they looked for our new friend in his 7EC Champ, he was nowhere to be found.
When the inspector finished, he said that there was easily a 99% probability that we should have died as a result of striking the wire as we did. Bringing back as much wire 150 feet of wire simply defied all logic, in his opinion. Of course my unseen friend, Sara, said quietly, “It pays to have friends….doesn’t it?!”
That event was early in my life and they kept getting more intense as time passed. You might even think, “Big Deal, what’s so OBE-ish about this?”
Well, there’s nothing OBE-ish about it, really. But guess what. This is all in the same “Lessons to be learned” category for the student. And, you, me, and everyone else here in physical reality are only here for one purpose….to learn. Sometimes our lessons happen when we’re in an altered state and sometimes when we’re in a conscious state. Regardless of when they happen…they’re important. And it’s equally important that we pay attention, keep an open mind, and try to learn as much as we can from all of these experiences.
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