Your article reminded me of my readings of Osho. In his Awareness, as an example, he says that consciousness and awareness are keys to happy and successful life; a life thus lived stops having adjectives good/bad, right/wrong as it takes on a new flavor, which we normal mortals do not and cannot know, of direct, uninterrupted, un-regrettable path towards a happy future which we create as we go.

Anyway so alert, awake and conscious about your body, thoughts and behavioral patterns is what makes you be in control of life and enjoying it.

But the notion of consciousness from this Eastern perspective has a limited intellectual appeal, let alone practical adaptation in West.

In West, we like to think of consciousness in terms of Hofstadter’s Strange Loops or in terms of Weak Emergence, in both cases consciousness being a complex fruit of interaction/grouping of simpler entities.

My 2 cents.

Nadine