Broken Heart And Contrite Spirit-How Do You Get That?

[pogi]

I think the heart is that new frontier between the mind of the spirit and the mind of the body, created once the two come together in mortality. It is something that did not exist in the pre-existence. It allows the physical mind to follow the dictates of the mind of spirit (which mind we always had, since "Man is spirit"), and the spiritual mind to gain experience from the physical mind (which we hadn't had before and which we have to learn to tame). Once the body's eternal element and eternal spirit are inseparably connected, the heart that was once a new frontier is now the mind of a new and everlasting being.

I like that, thanks for your thoughts!

[light from CARM]

When I see the word "heart" in the scriptures I take it to mean:

Motivation

Attitude

Desire

The problem being it is generally focused on worldly things.

Where as a broken heart would be to shift your Motivation, Attitude and Desire from worldly things to Jesus Christ

[Calm]

Volgadon can tell us how accurate this is:

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/27_heart.html

We often associate the heart with emotions such as love and kindness as in "He has a good heart". This is also true with the Hebrews who saw the heart as the seat of emotion. But unlike us they also saw the heart as the seat of thought whereas we see the brain as the seat of thought. To the ancient Hebrews the heart was the mind including all thoughts including emotions. When we are told to love God with all our heart (Deut 6:5) it is not speaking of an emotional love but to keep our emotions and all our thoughts working for him. The first picture in this Hebrew word is a shepherd staff and represents authority as the shepherd has authority over his flock. The second letter is the picture of the floor plan of the nomadic tent and represents the idea of being inside as the family resides within the tent. When combined they mean "the authority within".

The Hebrew word ru'ach literally means the wind and is derived from the parent root rach a prescribed path. The word rach is not found in the Biblical text but defined by the various child roots derived from it. The child roots derived from this parent root are arach, rachah and yarach. Arach is a traveler who follows a prescribed path from one place to another. Rachah is a millstone which goes round and round in the sense of following a prescribed path to crush grain into flour. Yarach is the root of yere'ach meaning the moon which follows a prescribed path in the night sky. The child root ru'ach is literally the wind that follows a prescribed path each season. By extension ru'ach means the wind of a man or what is usually translated as spirit. A man's wind is not just a spiritual entity within a man but is understood by the Ancient Hebrews as his character.

[Maidservant]

Notwithstanding that I loved what everyone had to say on this, something that I often think when I read that phrase is that everyone on earth has a broken heart. You can't be here and NOT have one. But how we RESPOND to our broken hearts is our choice, and God asks us to respond to our brokenness with a contrite spirit--humble and willing to PASS THROUGH our challenges that break our hearts so that the lessons God has in store for us through these refining fires will be unimpeded. When our spirit is contrite when/while our hearts our being broken, then the mysteries of God will be unfolded to us, and we will be transformed/sanctified by charity. Otherwise if we have broken hearts without a contrite spirit, which many in the world live this way, then our soul closes in on us and we just become blind and hardened and in pain. The contrite spirit choice is the difference between a soft heart and a hard heart.

We are taught that the sacrifice of animals and shedding of blood has been replaced by "a new" sacrifice of a broken heart and contrite spirit. http://www.lds.org/m...spirit?lang=eng

To my surprise, after reading the Old Testament for the first time, this teaching of the sacrifice of a broken heart and contrite spirit is littered throughout the Old Testament. Why are we taught that it is a new sacrifice that replaced the old sacrifice, when they were actually both practiced and taught at the same time? It doesn't seem like it replaced anything, we just got rid of one form of sacrifice and kept the other.

We still sacrifice animals--us--the carnal us.

I have been studying about the heart in scripture a lot lately and am fascinated by it's appearance in all of the central teachings of the gospel including the necessity of the sacrifice of a broken heart in order to obtain the baptism of fire, Zion (the pure in heart), the great commandment to love God and others with all of our heart, etc. We are taught to circumcise our hearts, we are told that God's law will be written on the "fleshy tablets of our hearts" But what is the heart exactly? How does it differ from our mind and spirit? The scriptures seem to use the terms "mind" and "heart" interchangeably at times while using them with separate and distinct meanings at other times, including the command to love with all of our heart and mind.

Bingo. The Book of Mormon is almost entirely about the heart. People see so many other things in it, that they don't see this. The Book of Mormon is almost entirely about having a soft heart. Starting right at the beginning of the Nephi/Laman saga through to ZION in Nephi 4 and Mormon and Moroni's closing instructions, EVERY story and passage in the Book of Mormon can be cast, and as I believe is MEANT to be cast, as an instruction about the human heart--the story, as a whole, of the transformation of the human heart. It's like a big CODEBOOK for the heart (The Book of Mormon is.)

Tangentially, with a couple of other threads going on the historicity of the Book of Mormon that completely bypass the encoded spiritual information in the Book of Mormon that may or may not have anything to do with historicity. This is one of the major ones (the heart code).

Do you feel the energy in the center of your chest? A center of energy that makes you know it is your HEART (not the blood pump)? (ever learned anything about chakras?) At this place is where we make commitments, choices, loves, trusts, etc. We do NOT make choices in our brains; we make it here in the center of our chest. So a place that is intimately connected to our choices is a subject of sanctification as taught in the scriptures. I don't think any reference to mind in the scripture can be referring to the brain, per se, as would they have known this anatomy? Although obviously there is energy centered in the head behind the eyes, also.