Metis, Awareness, & Metamorphosis

Reading time: about four minutes

Introduction

All great adventure books and movies are about one thing. It's been that way since Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey. It's true for books by John Grisham, Harlan Coben, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Frank Herbert, and it is valid for movies like Star Wars, The Matrix, and Guardians of the Galaxy. All these stories have one thing in common: they revolve around Metis. Metis is an ancient Greek word that means extreme alertness, resourcefulness, and cunning. Metis is needed to win a chariot race, sail the seas without a compass, and emerge from battle victorious. Metis requires intuition, creativity, and deep knowledge of humans. Metis allows running backs to duck and dodge for a 50 yard run on the football field. Metis is what jazz musicians are using as they improvise. Metis is the full deployment of our intelligence as humans. In short, Metis requires the best of us.

Metis & Awareness

Another word for alertness is awareness. Here we are not talking about ordinary awareness, but awareness of awareness itself. When we are unaware of being aware, our life passes without meaning and depth. Our actions and relationships feel empty. After all, we have all had adventures in our lives - traveling, falling in love, getting promoted, the birth of children - and our lives felt more meaningful, vivid, and alive during these adventures. Adventure calls forth a sort of meta-cognition, a meta-awareness, and it is precisely this meta-ness that brings more aliveness.

Metamorphosis

Adventure on its own does not change our lives. We may feel altered for a short time, but our new insights are often too weak to withstand the forces of habit and ordinary life. What can change us more permanently? What can bring about a more sustained metamorphosis?

Metamorphosis - Creating Sustained Change

Here are a few practical things that bring about a change in one’s life and one’s self:

1. Approaching our lives with a daily practice of experimentation can bring more lasting change because habits have a less secure foothold if we continuously experiment.

2. Building the muscle of awareness of awareness is an aid to a more realized change in oneself. For example, don’t just realize you are cooking, but appreciate that you are aware of cooking. Or, when leading a meeting, extend your awareness to include an awareness of leading. This meta-awareness increases creativity, sensitivity to others, and intelligence. Why? Because it allows for more data.

3. A daily practice of Metis - intentionally entering the unknown at the height of our engagement in the moment and subtle awareness of the field we happen to be in - is the best way to enter a more long-lasting metamorphosis.

A warning as you get started: it is almost impossible to do any of these as a daily practice. To simply see how difficult this daily practice is and how easily we forget would in itself be a sort of progress.

Also, there is hope. The hope is in the simplicity of seeing that we fail in our daily practice, and instead of giving up or giving in to negativity, we can simply start again, anew.