think of awareness as the light of day. it's actually just a field, but we base our entire internal construct on visualizing the reality around us so the light of day is a good example and apt.

anyway ... each neuron emits a spot of light as it fires. each spot of light is a moment of awareness, no matter how slight. the depth and clarity of that awareness if based on how many such spots of light we cause and the internal knowledge we have to apply it. don't think of learning as adding knowledge. think of it as cleaning off the windshield of your car as you're trying to drive. neurons firing makes your light brighter. we start off in a completely pitch black cave and each neuron firing is a slight glow of awareness like a tiny candle in that darkness.

awareness if just pure knowledge. walk out in the middle of your front yard on a clear day and look around you. this is what you know. this is your little globe of awareness. your globe gets bigger and more clear (less snowy) as you gain knowledge and have more light (neurons firing).

we aren't "just creatures of this body waiting to die". far from it. we are like helium-filled balloons tied to the ground yearning to bust free and explode into total awareness. but we're limited by this skin and these limited perceptions. once we rid ourselves of this mass then we are everywhere at once. bereft of mass light goes everywhere. that's why the speed of light is constant no matter how fast we are moving relative to it. it is not bound by time because it has no mass (Einstein) thus when it propagates it fills to entire container (quantum existence)instantaneously like a gas. the 186,000 mps is OUR perceptual limitation. our perceptual constant. light is just instantaneous. and awareness is the same.

as for your "proof". much like gravity in quantum space you can't measure awareness in newtonian space. for our "measurements" we stop a sliver in time ... but awareness doesn't exist in time. it's based on the passage of time in total. it's like in calculus when you find a delta. it's the accumulation of light from moment to moment and in total - not an individual sliver. it has no mass so you can't measure it. we measure light in ergs which is a unit of work (ergs over a distance or over a period). in a still instant it has no value. same with awareness.

doesn't matter really. we're all going to the same "place" no matter what you believe. once this body passes we become pure awareness again.

I don’t see how the firing of neurons could possibly lead to conscious awareness, no matter how many neurons are firing or in what order or pattern. No one has satisfactorily explained how such a thing could happen so far as I know.

I lean toward thinking that consciousness is a primary quality of reality.

Edwin Schrodinger:

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

I largely agree, Gary, but how would we recognize evidence of conscious awareness (CA).
Species besides H. sapiens have CA. Empathy surely requires CA. Reacting to images of themselves in mirrors does, as does devising tools and learning new uses for them.