Hi again, You wrote: My point would be, how do you define genius? This (eye-patterns and predicates) was based on modeling Self, Other (Grinder and Bandler) and then creating a context for discovering the difference between what works and what doesn't with regard to these distinction. The final set of geniuses being the group that G&B; tasked with using the patterns for "effective vs. ineffective communication" per the story in Whispering. There's your set of geniuses for a common function principle. (Hey, not everyone is Albert Einstein, right.) I guess it depends on how you define genius, but I tend towards the more inclusive view as it gives me more opportunity to learn. --yes, indeed. On the other hand, there would seem to be good reason to make some kind of distinction. The Meta Model didn't come from modeling the average citizen, or even the average therapist. The whole point of modeling would seem to me to have something to do with the idea that the person or persons you are modeling have a skill that they are at least better than average at. But it doesn't seem to me that the eye accessing discovery involved anyone who was particularly good at recognizing eye-accessing cues: rather, it was simply a discovery. To extend the word "modeling" to simply noticing a phenomemnon would seem, to me, to lose all of the word's specificity. As to the six-step reframing, I think the same objection applies. Modeling, as described in NLP, involves learning to do something by immitation, without knowing consciously how you do it, and then consciously analysing one's own behaviour to figure out how to code what you are doing, and finally refining the coding to make the process more efficient. In the case of six-step reframing, Grinder never seems to have been involved in the first step, and never needed to consciously analyze the pattern, because his unconscious was so obliging. I, like you, think this is wonderful, and would love my own unconscious to do the same. But it seems to be a significantly different process than that involved in modeling. My concern is that any field that so broadens its basic definitions as to make them meaningless, or ignores the fact that some of its achievements come from sources other than the one it, in theory, sees as the basic source may eventually pay a price for fuzzy thinking. But that's just me...and I tend to prize clarity more than most people find absolutely neccesary. This is an interesting discussion, thanks for joining in.