Abiding in the Heart

Meditative self-inquiry, for me, is the powerful and radical act of finding out for myself that the universe is friendly.

BJ Harden Jones
Program Facilitator

An Invitation

This short video is your personal invitation to join the year-long journey into the heart. ♡

February 2023

Introduction to The Work & Abiding in the Heart Orientation.
_{We learn about the Judge Your Neighbor (JYN) worksheet and about starting from where we are. Working with the stressful stories right in front of us, we begin to inquire. We kick off the year together with a virtual Welcome Party! (Sunday January 29, 4-8pm ET). Please note that this is the only month where attendance to a group call is specifically a pre-requisite to the year.}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Intro and Chapter 1: A Few Basic Principles.

March 2023

Comparisons and Complaints.
_{We continue covering the basics of inquiry this month. And we're guided through an exercise of looking at what we complain about, from small and petty to more constant irritations. We take these lists to inquiry, seeing beyond the mind's capacity to compare and complain.}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapter 2: The Great Undoing.

April 2023

Our Formative Years.
_{This month our focus is on writing honestly about our parents, siblings, relatives, and people who influenced us when we were children. There are so many things we have been told, and we have believed. When we know how, we can go back and check: Is that true for me?}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapter 3 and half of 4: Entering the Dialogues & Couples and Family Life.

May 2023

There's Room for Everything.
_{We turn our lens to "negative" emotions. This can ripple back to childhood when many of us were taught to ignore, hide, or try to change those emotions. We begin to discover together how, in reality, there's room for everything just the way it is. And this supports us to look into: What do I exclude? What do I resist? Making space to welcome these pieces back home to the heart.}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Complete chapter 4: Couples and Family Life.

June 2023

Relating with Others.
_{We're invited to look into how we relate romantically, sexually, in friendships, and in any other way with our fellow human beings. Where am I open and loving? Where am I closed and distrustful? How do I want to be seen? As always, choose your own adventure: Identify small annoyances, or the big ones. Through inquiry, both offer a gateway to the heart.}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapter 5: Deepening Inquiry.

July 2023

Money, Career, and the Future.
_{So often we use money and our work to shape how we want to be seen, and how we want to be secure and safe in the future. We focus this month on questioning our thinking about not having enough, needing more, and how we actually get to where we want to be.}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapter 6: On Work and Money.

August 2023

Judging the Self.
_{Who is it that you think you should be? What do you not live up to? They say that we're our own worst critics. So... who is this "me" I compare myself to? What if this "me" that I judge is no more personal than judging everyone else has turned out to be?}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapters 7 and 8: Self-Judgments & The Work with Children.

September 2023

Living Turnarounds and Prescription for Happiness.
_{This month we look more closely at our specific advice for others, uncovering therein hidden gems that can guide our own lives. We get clear on the advice that we've been giving to others. And then we ask: Could it be that, if I follow that advice myself, it will aive me the peace and happiness I was looking for "out there"?}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapters 9 and 10: Underlying Beliefs & Doing The Work on Any Thought or Situation.

October 2023

Judging the Body.
_{Katie says, "Bodies don't think, care, or have any problem with themselves." This month, we look at our apparent flaws in health and appearance, and how we live when we believe that our bodies should be different. Is it possible to begin to find the innocence of the bodies we live in?}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapter 11: The Body and Addictions.

November 2023

Learning about Fear.
_{Living with unquestioned thoughts of the future can have drastic impacts on our well-being in the moment. This month, as we turn our attention to situations that upset us, we look specifically to our fears of the future, to what we're afraid will happen. If fear is the story of a future, is it possible to finally find the end of fear, right now?}

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Half of Chapter 12: Making Friends with the Worst That Can Happen.

December 2023

The Don't-Know Mind.
_{This month we sit with letting in the places where we don't know. So far this year, in checking to see what we can and cannot absolutely know to be true, our minds have likely opened up to a new relationship with not knowing. Now we focus on what that means, and how to navigate through life, possibly without knowing anything for sure. Could it be that that's freedom?}

Optional daily inquiry jam during months 11 and 12: December and January.

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Complete Chapter 12.

January 2024

Graduation! & Questioning Separation.
_{As we move towards finishing up this year of inquiry, and potentially "going our separate ways," we look at our apparent separation. It's easy to assume that there is a "me" and an "everything else." But can we actually know that for sure? What can you verify from your own direct experience? The idea of separation is often called the root of suffering. Is it possible that there is only one awareness?}

Optional daily inquiry jam during months 11 and 12: December and January.

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Chapters 13 and 14: Questions and Answers & The Work in Your Life.

JOIN

1 your Home Team meet ups twice per month.

PARTNER UP

2 and inquire. Spend an hour or more a week in inquiry.

FOLLOW

3 the curriculum by watching the monthly theme videos.

WRITE

4 your worksheets. Complete a JYN meditation and worksheet per week, to utilize in your inquiry.

CONNECT

5 with fellow Abiding participants by joining at least one Group Support Call each month.

STAY CURIOUS

6 and engage in learning with fellow participants. We're here to find our own personal quidance and truth.

LEAN IN,

7 connect, and be authentic. Share generously. Your experiences may be what someone needs to hear today.

HONOR

8 and encourage one another's genuine personal work. And hold content shared within Abiding in the Heart confidentially.

COMMIT

9 to full attendance by the end of month 2. The first two months are available as a trial. After that, participants agree to pay full tuition.

My name is BJ Harden Jones. I'm a cultural catalyst, peace worker, consciousness evolutionary, truth teller, philosopher, mystic, loving presence, community co- founder and pillar, rad mama and partner, totally fallible human, and the heart behind Step Into Truth: my platform for supporting others (and myself! in finding the end of suffering.

Since discovering the powerful peace available through self-inquiry, I've been a devoted facilitator and practitioner of self-inquiry in the lineage of The Work of Byron Katie. For more than a decade, I've practiced this process in my own life and shared its magic with others. I also continue my path of learning, and deepening into my own self-realization.

Through both the blessing and the cultivation of an open heart and mind, I have learned so much about the nature of reality and how to live in alignment with what is. I feel deeply honored and fortuitous to be in the position of sharing what I find, and helping myself and others shine with the joy of a life well-lived. ♡

Session are facilitated by longtime practitioner of "The Work," and TOTOH Academy faculty member, BJ Harden Jones. They will be held virtually on Zoom. Due to the focus required to fruitfully engage, participants are asked to be present, seated, and ready to bring their full attention for the duration of each call. The access link for the calls are located in the TOTOH Academy dashboard.

Inquiring Together is open to all members of TOTOH Academy. Membership is available to all positive seekers. A monthly subscription is required to become a member, priced on a sliding scale. If you would like to join, but your finances make it difficult for you to afford the membership fee, please reach out to us to request a scholarship. Email [email protected].

Knowing the goodness that we are.

The meditative style we practice together will be dynamic, participatory, experiential, and engaging. Through this practice, we come to know more directly and intimately what we are, through a specific and focused undoing of what we're not.

We'll be engaging in a conversation between mind and awareness. Undoing the identification with mind, we come to find that what we've always been is the awareness that is seemingly behind the contents of mind.

Through the lineage of The Work of Byron Katie, we begin with finding stressful thoughts. This is our entryway to uncovering our freedom. We sit with what our experience of reality is like when the thought is believed, and with what our reality and our presence is like when we're without the thought. In this way we come to understand directly what thoughts really are, and what we really are.

“Peace comes when you recognize the nature of thoughts,
not when thought comes to an end.”
– Rupert Spira

Adding in the teachings from the Direct Path (as taught by Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Rupert Spira, and more), we see that what we are is prior to thought, and prior to identification. We rest without thought. And we practice turning our awareness directly towards awareness itself.

“The knowing of our own being as it is, is happiness itself.”
– Meaning of the Sanskrit phrase Sat-Chit-Ananda