You wrote "Up to 50% of "vision" is modified by traffic going in the other direction" Exactly, as far as i'm concerned, you are giving your own answer to yoru remarks: "I suspect it is actually quite easy with practice to separate one from the other to a fairly large degree. " and "at least approximate a 'know-nothing state'. " I prefer to be quite sceptical as far as our abilities are concerned to counter the 50% modification.  After all, if you would be right, we would be able to know the territory in stead of the map and a "rational scientist" would be able to know the outside world as it is.  In other words, you end up in the big western myth.  I prefer to believe that FA will be modified by our emotional state, etc. On the other hand, having attended one of John Grinder's seminars in 1997, I agree that trusting your unconcious and setting up a signalling system with your unconscious help to see patterns which you wouldn't "detect" if your concious thinking gets in the way (or which may take much longer to detect).  But this isn't a "know nothing state", but an open state, being open to all possibilities (in which you allow your unconscious to use everything you haveever learned as distinctions).  After all, as a baby you have learned to recognize lines, forms, etc.  You  have learned to recoggnise sounds as "words".  While modeling unconsciously, you still use all those learned skills, even if you may want to stop the conciousness to kick in and start interpreting and analysing things. Hope this clarifies what I meant, Patrick www.merlevede.biz