When you stand close to a Big Picture, you can see detail, but only parts of the whole. When you take a step or two back, you lose some detail but you see the larger patterns in an expanded context. You have a different idea of what lies beyond the edges of the frame.
When you solve a connect-the-dots puzzle, you draw in a linear manner from number to number, but as you do, you look for an image to emerge. At some moment there comes an "AHA" of recognition. In this metaphor it may be more of an "UH OH."
Intelligence can be defined as the ability to Connect the Dots, to think about things in different contexts, to recognize patterns. To think and talk about Thinking is to "step back" to another "level" of thinking. To question our Thinking, to examine our assumptions, to notice the Languages (verbal, visual, emotional, imaginative and abstract) of the thoughts passing through our minds: all these mental actions require the ability, like consciousness itself, to observe our own observations, and be able to question their reliability.
In questioning what we Think we Know and how we see the world, we lose some of the precision and stability of a static "picture," and our minds must open to the unknown and the unpredictable. But that's the jumping off point for the creative Thinking we'll need to survive.