Anubis (the black-headed guy) reached into my chest and pulled out my heart (yes, it HURT), and placed it on the scale opposite the feather of MAAT. What he's touching with his right hand is something called the "TEKH". There is an Egyptian saying: "Oh my BA, oh my heart of my Mother, oh my Tekh.". The Tekh is like a pearl, that builds up in our amygdala, when we are kind and show compassion. The Ba is the bird on the left, landing on the chest of the deceased. The Ba is the human component of our soul: us, all that will be remembered of our existence in this lifetime. The Ba is our conscience, and if we do not stay in constant contact with it while conscious it comes screaming back painfully as soon as we pass into the light. I fell down on my knees, weeping, aware of what a terrible person I was.
You'll notice that the Tekh is placed on the same side as the feather of MAAT, so, if we have a heavy heart because we are all sinners, that can be balanced by the fact that we were a good and kind person during our lives. You can forget about death-bed conversions; it takes many years of being loving and kind to build up a sizeable Tekh.
Anubis is much scarier that he looks here: he's all obsidian triangles, shifting, and looking into his visage is like staring into the abyss. These images are stick figures compared to what really faces us at the weighing. Interestingly: the Egyptian word for hieroglyph is "medu-neter" which can be translated as "stick figure".
We have a second component to our soul: the KA, which is universal spirit, and which we can build by living a good and virtuous life (thus contributing to the universal pool of goodness which all major religions try to increase, and which is the source of inspiration). We increase our KA by following our BA and working on our Tekh.
I went through this weighing and was sent back, minus the vision in one eye, the price I paid for having a heavy heart.
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