Related to this, I think the phenomenon of "being in the zone" is where the separation between reality and what we perceive of reality seems to get extra narrow

Related to this, I think the phenomenon of "being in the zone" is where the separation between reality and what we perceive of reality seems to get extra narrow (to the point of thinking that there isn't a separation between the two). In times like this, we tend to do things "without thinking" (such as in the case of athletes), but I suspect that we are either processing things (a background level of "thinking") so quickly that our minds can't/don't have time to explicitly form thoughts about reality and respond to these thoughts, so eventually they give up on doing these things during the duration of much of the remaining time in the zone, or so processing things so correctly (matching reality relatively better than in other times/contexts) that it's notable.