Thanks for that info Alex, I’m finding out with GeoD there’s so much more to configure than just putting together a basic wordpress/woocommerce site. I was able to get it to work selecting “Html” from the three “dots” in the upper right. THEN I could fine the shortcode to insert customize_filters=”always” into and it worked after I did it that way. For some reason, probably a factor of Gutenburg (which has been another learning curve in this endeavor) the shortcode alterations werent working on the original Search or Directory page. I created a new page from scratch to get a clean start instead.
So the long and short of it is
1: Gutenberg again is a pain in the ass by hiding/obfuscating options devs need
2: Editing as HTML was able to give me the granular control I needed to make this work
Awesome and thanks again for steering me toward the solution and avoiding any of the 900 rabbit holes!