How do you know if an immediate reaction is intuition or conditioning? Joe says it’s a somatic experience, not an intellectual one. His test: does your heart close down? If so, it’s likely unhealthy conditioning. When he rebels against authority or reacts from abandonment patterns, his heart has to close.
Speaking truth feels different—there’s vulnerability, openness, maybe a “pucker” of nervousness, even bewilderment (“did I just say that?”). It feels like channeling or surrender, not like defending a position. Brett adds that wisdom-through-you feels open and bewildered, while tribal conditioning feels like “the shield and the spear in front of a phalanx of warriors.”
“My heart closes down if I’m in conditioning… when I’m in a pattern of rebelling against authority, man, my heart had to close down.”
The practice: every time you make an immediate decision, notice how your body feels. Over time you learn to distinguish the two. And if you can’t feel your body at all, “walk around for the next two weeks keeping 10% of your attention in your body.”