The goal of embodiment can't be to be guided only by our momentary visceral responses. This is a popular teaching which is quite appealing for a season to those who have been most harmed.
These visceral responses are managed by the ego - whose map is unreliable at best, designed by anxiety and trauma as well as authentic basic needs and authentic self protection. But it isn't always honest with us. We know that anxiety lies to us. We know that trauma lies to us. And both of these talk a lot to our ego.
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The goal of embodiment is to place the seat of control **back in our own body-mind** and begin to employ our inner wisdom to **navigate the different identities within us** - only one of which is the ego.
In my experience with those people who believe they have decolonized their mind because they are guided by basic impulse, this represents further damage and fallout. The pendulum has swung all the way to the other direction, and now the damage is not only within them, having dividing them from their own experience but now the division is within their relationships.
Healing work isn't obeying the visceral as a rule, but befriending and guiding it ourselves, even taming and integrating it ourselves instead of allowing empire and patriarchy to do that to their ends.
The ego is an important voice many have been taught to overlook and ignore, but not the same as an integrated mind-body instinct, which comes with time and a practice of self-awareness. It is living wisdom.
It pains me to watch people destroy relationships in this pendulum swing simply because they believe they should trust their primal impulse to be in charge instead of welcomed as a valuable, but rowdy team member in need of integration and often a time out.
We won't get what we want when we trust our first response as our only guide, and especially not when our deepest wounds are involved. But it is best to have a healthy relationship with all of our instincts and impulses, welcoming what messages they may bring, what growth they may have for us, and how they might be integrated into wisdom.
