Now, "cognition" is an easy enough word to define to an acceptable approximation (namely by giving the synonym "thinking").

However, "meta" is a concept less frequently encountered (or at least, explicitly described) in everyday life, and would probably require a few examples to convey. Part of the issue is that you are defining the general concept of "X relating to X" in order to describe the specific case of "Thinking relating to thinking".

If your listener already has the concept "meta", then, yes, this is fine, but if they don't then you are like the mathematician attempting to define the most abstract version of a problem to the physicist who only wants to solve a single, specific case.