Is the "Heart" Just Feelings? The Word Is Lab, and It Means Your Thinking, Choosing Core

You were taught that the "heart" is where you feel. Love, sadness, longing, the seat of emotion, opposed to the cold head where you think. So when the text says to love Yahuah "with all your heart," people hear: with all your feelings. But the word is Lab, and in the Scrolls the Lab is not mainly your feelings. It is your mind, your will, your thinking and deciding center, the place where you plan, weigh, choose, and know. When the text says give Him your Lab, it is asking for your thoughts and your decisions, not just a warm rush.

The word, in the oldest writing we have

Before English, and before the Square Script, it was written in an older form of the letters, the Paleo Script. Here it is in both forms:

What the word actually means

Lab, and its longer form Labab, is the inner person: the seat of thinking, understanding, memory, planning, and choosing, as well as feeling. In the way these people spoke, this is where you reason and decide. To "say in your Lab" is to think to yourself. To have a "wise Lab" is to have understanding. To set your Lab on something is to fix your purpose. Yes, feelings live there too, but the Lab is far bigger than feeling. It is the whole steering center of a person.

That is why losing this word matters. When Lab shrank to "heart," and "heart" shrank to emotion, a command aimed at your whole thinking, choosing self got heard as a call for a feeling.

Read it in the text

Dabarim (Deuteronomy) 6:5 says: "And you shall love Yahuah your Alahym with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your might." With all your Lab. He is asking for your whole inner self, your thoughts and your will, not merely an emotion. To love Him with all your Lab is to bend your thinking and your choices toward Him.

Dabarim 6:6 says: "And these words which I am commanding you today shall be in your heart." His words placed in the Lab, held in the thinking, remembering, deciding center. You do not store instructions in a feeling. You store them in your mind and will, which is what the Lab is.

Mishliy (Proverbs) 4:23 says: "Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the sources of life." Guard your Lab, because everything you do flows out of your thinking and choosing core. That is a command about the command center of your life, not about protecting your moods.

What "heart" did to it

"Heart" is not a wrong word by itself, but English split the person in two: the head thinks, the heart feels. Once that split hardened, "heart" was handed to emotion and stripped of thought. So the reader hears "love Yahuah with all your heart" as a call to feel deeply about Him, and quietly assumes the mind, the reasoning, the daily decisions, belong to some other department. But the Lab was never split off from thinking. The command was always for the whole inner self: think toward Him, decide for Him, remember His words, and feel toward Him too. English kept the feeling and lost the mind and will.

How this connects to the Turah

Here is the connection. The Turah, the instruction of Yahuah, is meant to be written on the Lab, held in the thinking and deciding core, and lived out by the will. Dabarim 6, which says love Him with all your Lab, is the very passage that then says to bind His words to you and teach them to your children, because the Turah is for the whole inner person, not a feeling that comes and goes. If the Lab is only emotion, then people imagine they can love Yahuah with a feeling while their thoughts and choices ignore His instruction. But when the Lab is restored to mean mind and will, loving Him and keeping His Turah become the same motion: your whole inner self turned toward Him and His teaching.

Let us be honest about what is proven

Proven: Lab and Labab name the inner person as the seat of thought, will, memory, and choice, as well as feeling. The text places His words in the Lab, commands loving Him with all the Lab, and says life flows out of the Lab (Dabarim 6:5 and 6; Mishliy 4:23). The word is far wider than emotion.

Not overclaimed: the Lab does include feeling; we are not removing emotion from it. The point is that English narrowed a whole steering center down to feelings alone, dropping the thinking and the will that the word always carried.

Now sit with it

You were told the heart is where you feel. But the word is Lab, your thinking, choosing, deciding core, and He asked for all of it.

Go read Dabarim 6:5 and 6, and notice He wants His words in your Lab and your love with all your Lab. Then ask the question they never put to you:

If the Lab is your mind and your will and not just your feelings, is it possible to love Yahuah with all your heart while your thoughts and choices walk the other way?

Words in this teaching (how to say them)