3 metamorphoses

In a passage from “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, Nietzsche outlines three metamorphoses of the spirit. The spirit is the essence of the human. In the first stage, the spirit is a camel, wanting to bear as much weight as possible on its shoulders as it undertakes an adventure in the desert.

The adventure can be seen as the drive to discover something new: to be on a journey and gather insights, competence, and a valid position in society. Therefore, the camel wants responsibility in order to gain competence and sojourn on an upward trajectory of the spirit.

At some point, this approach of addition becomes obsolete and ineffective. The camel becomes the lion while journeying in the now more familiar desert. The lion gets rid of everything to create the space for voluntary transformation—from “I should” to “I will”, a testament to its readiness to lead and transform itself and others.

The preying lion must become a child, the final stage of metamorphosis. The child is “innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, …, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying.” These capacities are required for deep personal transformation.

This metaphor can be applied at a macro and micro level.

A person can go through the three metamorphoses throughout life, marinating in each stage until some realization occurs, allowing the next stage to happen. I don’t think this is true for everyone, but only for those people who are invested in the journey to understand everything more deeply than what’s given.

Similarly, the three stages can occur at a micro level within a specific context—for example, in the context of relationships, work, or spiritual or physical practice. In fact, I believe this is more common—you can achieve great realizations in one area of life while being oblivious to the same level of depth present in other areas.

But once you can see the process happening, it becomes a meta-skill that you can apply in any domain.

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