Through a friend in a spirituality group in San Antonio, Toby Johnson has come to know Eva Thayer, a very impressive woman.

Eva was a 95 year-old wise woman when I began assisting her with her webpage. She died at age 98 on May 22, 2013.

Originally from Ohio, she'd been living in San Antonio now since the mid 1980s. She had a life-changing experience (discussed below in her own words) at age 50.

From that experience, she developed a meditation book, titled More We Than Me, and a series of songs and dances (accompanied by a workbook --which she is holding the in the photo) that teach children positive spiritual wisdom.

For Eva Thayer, the name of God is "Me," that is, whenever we speak of ourselves, we are really speaking of God. In her little meditation book, More We Than Me, the index is a preview of the book.  It is titled "God is experience" and each chapter is a question.   When?..... where?.... why? and how? is God experience?  What happens when God is experience and Who experiences God?  

Due to the fact that More We Than Me is primarily graphic design along with short Jesus quotes from the Bible, it takes only about ten minutes to read it but it takes a lifetime to live it. 

Download More We Than Me
(Use <SAVE> after the file is downloaded to your desktop for later reading)
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In the book, More We Than Me, Thayer uses "me" to refer to individuality and isolation. So the transformation from "me to we" is a stage in spiritual growth of seeing beyond oneself as a bounded, alienated individual.

In her music and her training for children, she uses "Me" in a much more exalted and expanded sense to mean, not the isolated individual, but the interconnected field of consciousness of which we all parts, i.e. "Love within." Self-esteem is the secret of living a good and contributing life.

Here's Eva's story, in her own words (though written in the 3rd person):

Miracles

Eva Thayer had an awakening of the Spirit.  She carried on an inner dialogue with herself, as we all do.  But in 1964, at age 50, everything changed.  While thinking to herself, she was surprised to hear, "Are you willing to die?"  She realized that this was not a question one would ask oneself.  Then it dawned on her that it had to be her soul, her inner Spirit self.  Eva remembered Jesus' words, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God within and all things are added."  She never dreamed that it would be possible to have a conversation with God within herself.  The next question she heard was: "Will you write for me?"   It was hilarious!  It did not occur to her that if she died she could not write.  She just answered "Yes" to both questions and began to write.  At the time she believed that she promised to die a physical death but later she understood that she promised to die to her human self so she could be acquainted with and dialogue with her Spirit self.   

     Extraordinary events began to happen due to inner guidance from Spirit.  Eva perceives the following joyful experiences as being miracles.    

     Miracle #1:  Eva taught children to play the piano and to do rhythms but she did not know how to compose music.  Spirit guided her to go to the University of Bowling Green music department part time for two and a half years to learn to do that -- compose music.  At the time she wondered why.   Years later she realized it was for her to acquire the ability to create MeLand (Land of Love) CD’s of music.     

      Miracle #2:  During the time Eva was going to the University she was also designing greeting cards.   Her Holy Spirit self gave her people to write to and four line poems to go in each card.  Some of people were strangers to her.  One silent night when the snow was gently falling, Eva stayed awake all night to write a greeting card to the husband of one of her friends.  He was in the hospital and the doctors had agreed that he would die.  The next morning she drove her car through deep snow to her friend’s house to give her the ten page card.   The next day Eva’s phone rang and she heard an excited voice saying, "Eva, a miracle happened.  My husband sat up in bed and watched television.  Then he walked down the hall of the hospital.  He is healed.  The doctors say he can go home."

     Miracle #3: Writing greeting cards ended when her inner voice said, "Eva,  people talk about Me, read the Bible about Me, pray to Me and give sermons about Me.  I want people to experience Me like you do.  Will you write a book to let people know that they can experience me? "   She did.  She titled it  More We Than Me.   It is a pocket-sized, 85 page book of Jesus’ quotes taken from the Bible.  Because the majority of pages are a graphic with a quote, it takes only about ten minutes to read More We Than Me.   But the words in the book are powerful. 
It takes a lifetime to live them. 

    Miracle #4:  Eva formed Tes Publishing Co. and self-published her book.  In 1985 she published 3,000 copies.  In 1986 she revised it and published 5000 additional copies.  More We Than Me became a success.  Eva walked into a B Dalton book store and handed the manager her book.  The manager flipped through it, handed it back and said, "This is not a book for our store."  Eva said: "If you read it, you would know it belongs on your shelf with Jonathon Livingston Sea Gull."  The manager said, "O. K. I’ll set a date for an autograph party in this mall.  I will also set a date with the manager in another mall."   Wow!  That manager gave Eva permission to autograph More We Than Me in two stores and she didn’t even read her book!  The result was that Eva autographed More We Than Me 12 times at B Daltons book stores in San Antonio Texas and Toledo Ohio. 

      Miracle # 4: At the autograph parties Catholic children were drawn to the little book.  They expressed enthusiasm and excitement when they leafed through it.  This led Eva to take it to the Catholic Diocese.   Sister Anthony, who was in charge of curricula in all the San Antonio schools, introduced Eva to Sister Finbarr, principal of St. Mary Magdelin’s school.   Wow!  To Eva’s surprise, Sister Finbarr invited Eva to teach the concepts found in More We Than Me to all grades, kindergarten through eighth, for 45 minutes periods.  Eva let the children know the concepts with "Do It" books.  They were drawing, coloring, writing books that children could do alone…..no teacher help.   What FUN!  The children were delighted to learn, grow and create with individual books.  Eva arranged activities which reinforced the concepts.  They formed a "Me-We Circle, marched, beat a drum and recited affirmations in rhythm.  She and Sister Finbarr developed a program pairing young children with teens.  They called themselves MePals.  The children had large page "Do It" books to color, draw and write in.   The teens had pocket-sized ones.  They discovered the books and activities were delightful to experience.  

      Miracle #5….Right out of the blue Eva thought of the word MeLand.  She thought, "What a perfect word to describe Love within."  When she gave the word MeLand to teens, they knew immediately that it defined love within: They told her:   "When people know about MeLand there will be no war, no jails, no drugs, and no people sick in hospitals."   The teens, children and Eva continued to interact for five years.  When Sister Finbarr retired, Eva left and began to compose MeLand Music for world wide distribution.  Over a period of 8 years the MeLand songs that Eva composed at the school grew into 77 raps, rounds and beat dances on 3 three MeLand CD’s.    

      Miracle #6   To separate the songs into categories, Eva designed the MeLand Wheel.  Love is the hub of the wheel.  The spokes are Identity, Space, Connections, Energy, Feelings, Gratitude, Perception and Choices.   Peace and Joy are the circumference of the wheel.  She recommends keeping a laminated wheel or an enlarged wheel near by for continual reference.   It aids in making wise "on the spot" decisions.  The MeLand Wheel is a foundation to build character.  Children who grow up with the MeLand Wheel feel loved….which gives them a life long feeling of being secure.  

      Miracle #7 Eva has two websites that were created by her son Bill, web master.  She wrote http://melandbz.info/ after completing More We Than Me, the Celebrate MeLand Song-Activity Book and the first MeLand CD of music. 

1. listen to samples of all the songs on all three CD’s and order copies of the CDs and books

2. down load songs and the words from the 3 CDs

   Miracle #8   Eva will be 95 years old November, 2009.   She quotes her friend Quentin who created the four C’s -- Continual Capacity for Conscious Communication.   It is true: Everyone can live the four C’s.   Eva  is an example of the value of the four C’s.      

Here're a couple of other pieces Eva wrote about her life-positive teaching:


"Why I call my Spiritual Self Holy Me"

Eva Thayer

    When the September 11th, 2001 twin tower tragedy happened in New York City, I was feeling deep sorrow.  As I watched the National Prayer Service on my TV, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit said to me,   "Eva, hear all the prayers being directed to God?  Who directs prayers to Holy Me?  I yearn to have communion with my children."

   Even though I had played with the word ME for many years, it never occurred to me to call Holy Spirit HOLY ME.   Isn’t that out-standing?  Isn’t that amazing?  When I say or think of the words Holy Me I just have to giggle a little.   It seems to me that the words Holy Me is clever way to refer to God within oneself. 

     That takes care of only half of what the Holy Spirit said to me.  There are still these words, "I yearn to have communion with my children."  I thought, "Human Eva would never have used the word 'Communion'   I think of communion as passing wine and bread as the blood and body of Jesus.  That couldn’t be what the Holy Spirit meant with the word communion.  For a long time I pondered the word "Communion."   Then all of a sudden I remembered the dictionary.  Wow!  I thought.  That’s where I can find out the definition for communion.  It is in the dictionary!  I hurried to get my dictionary to find out the meaning and guess what the word communion means?  It means INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP!  Isn’t that wonderful?  The Holy Spirit yearns to have an intimate relationship with everyone in the world….you, me, people in every nick and cranny of the world.

GRANDMA EVA GIVES GOD CREDIT

    No matter what race or creed you are.  No matter what name you use to refer to your Creator, whether it be God, Jehovah, Buddha, or one of the many other names, the experience that happened to me could happen to you or anyone.  Why?  It is because all over the world each one of us lives in the nature that is provided, and we function in the very same way.  The reason I use the word God for our Creator, is that my mother and father were Christian.      

 
  
     It’s wild!   It’s incredible!  It is just amazing that the God part of us gives the human part of us many gifts.  The ones that top the list for me are: 

1. Energy.  I don’t have to turn on a switch or plug in a cord to get it.  It is always there for me. 

2. Love cannot be defined in words but it can be felt.   Loving Energy gives me "get up and go".  The love I feel is cuddly and warm like a warm blanket on a cold night.  Quieting my mind and body brings rich rewards. 

3. Freedom to create the reality I choose to create.  I am never told to do this or that.  No matter what I think or do, energy and the feeling of love is always available. 

4.  My body.  Everyday I look at it and see a miracle.  My heart has never missed a beat for almost 95 years.  And my digestive system, lungs, nerves, bones, muscles, ears, eyes, nose, etc. work for me every hour of every day. 

5.  We are given talents and abilities that are loads of fun to experience.  Here are five: instinct, intelligence, intuition, imagination and insight.  When I discovered these words that begin with the letter "I", I created a one person play and titled it "The I’s of Me."  Then I memorized it to share it at my toastmaster club.  The  performance was a huge success.  The testimonials from the members were wonderful.    

    Someone else enjoyed using the word "me" like I do.

   An author friend, Pegi Joy Jenkins, who lives in Sedona, Arizona sent books to me that were written by Lou Austin who was born in 1892 and died in 1976.   He formed the Partnership Foundation and produced stories that teach kids to blow out the little me and breathe in the Great me.   Pictures in Lou’s book cleverly show that the little me is egotistical, wants everything, and is cranky and unhappy.  The Great me is a happy me that loves everyone and is willing to share.  

      Lou Austin and I are MePals who never met.  But he gave his life doing what I gave my life doing.  We wrote "Me Books."  Lou understood and I understand that when kids are taught that they have a little me and a Great me, what seems to be impossible in life becomes possible.  Kids grow up being happy me’s.  Problems are easily solved or they do not show up at all.  The MeLand motto refers to being a Happy Me.  It comes from song # 7 on the first MeLand CD,   The motto is:  Love That I AM Fills Me With JOY. 

    Twelve times at B Dalton stores, I autographed the pocket-size book that I wrote and published in 1985 (revised in 1986).  The book is titled More We Than Me.  It takes 10 minutes to read it and a lifetime to live it.

    For five years I presented More We Than Me to children in classrooms (kindergarten through 8th grade).  Being in the school gave me a place to develop what I call "Do It" books and compose music for the children.  Next on my agenda was to join with professional musicians, Peter Carey and Jayne Morgan Kidd to create three CD’s of music…..a total of 77 songs, raps and rounds.   Autograph parties at Border’s and Barnes and Noble stores followed the production of MeLand music and the companion song-activity book.  

     You may wonder about the word MeLand.  I added the word land to the word me (MeLand) to give each one of us a word to describe the love part of us which is God.   Then I asked the seventh grade. What would happen if everyone in the world lived in MeLand?  Eager to reply, hands flew into the air.  Examples of the answers were, There would be no war, no jails and no hospitals.  

     My perception is MeLand is a place everyone in the world can go to worship.  In this place God guides and administers to each one of us continuously.  Listening and obeying is the only role human us needs to play our stage of life.  We are free to open our curtain each day to the fun of being "ME".  When we do, we are Happy Me’s in MeLand. 

    MeLand, Land of Love, music teaches children to be responsible citizens.   The music is presented directly to children in what I call "Do It" Books. 

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