What you'll receive

• 52 Weekly Meditative Lessons: Designed to guide you step-by-step through self-inquiry.

• Monthly Check-in Calls: Stay on track and get the guidance you need.

• Accountability Partnerships: Pair up with someone in the group to hold each other accountable throughout the year.

• Guided Reflection Exercises: Tools to help you deepen your practice and track your growth.

An Invitation

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

Month 1 (Tentatively February 2025)

Introduction to The Work & Abiding in the Heart Orientation.
_{We kick off our year together with a virtual Welcome Party! (Please note that this is the only month where attendance to a group call is specifically a pre-requisite to the year.) Then we begin our journey with Foundations of Inquiry, a guided online course that establishes our clear groundwork for the year. Working with the stressful stories right in front of us, we begin to inquire.} 

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

Month 2

Comparisons and Complaints.
_{We continue to establish firm footing in the practice. Launch well to finish well! This month, 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.

Month 3

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.

Month 4

There's Room for Everything.
_{We turn our lens to "negative" emotions. This often ripples back to our early years when many of us were taught to ignore, hide, or try to change those emotions. We begin to discover together that, 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.

Month 5

Relating with Others.
_{We're invited this month to look into how we relate romantically, sexually, in friendships, and in any other connection 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 truth of who we are in the heart.}

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

Month 6

Money, Career, and the Future.
_{So often, we use money and our work to shape both 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.

Month 7

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.

Month 8

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 give 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.

Month 9

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.

Month 10

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? And could that be a more intelligent way to live?}

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

Month 11

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.

Optional reading: Loving What Is - Complete Chapter 12.

Month 12

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.

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 per week in inquiry.

FOLLOW

3 the curriculum by watching the monthly theme videos.

WRITE

4 your worksheets. Complete a meditation 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 with fellow participants. We're here to find our own personal guidance, not anyone else's.

LEAN IN,

7 connect, be authentic, and 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 Work with West: 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. ♡