Is consciousness better understood as a verb (a process)?

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The word you want to use for this is ‘awaken’ or if you want to be more prosaic, “to come to awareness of.”

Verbing nouns is a cool activity, but it’s rather cliquish. ‘Adulting’ is a very millenial concept, your parents aren’t really going to understand the intuitive appeal of the concept. Your grandparents, forget it. They just want to see you turn into one just long enough so they can see their great grandbabies before they die.

No, it’s best to use existing terms where they exist, unless you’re purposefully trying to be exclusive. Absolutely, consciousness is an activity as much as it is a thing. But there’s no need to find a new term for that activity, we already have them.

That said, I like to think in terms of “making something self-aware.” The neatest expression of this would be to build a company that runs itself. Well, that’s impossible, but what’s the minimum amount of attention I have to give it? I have to construct this thing that can go under its own steam, imbue it with agency and then recharge it.

All of these things involve me pushing my consciousness into something else. It’s a neat way to think about things. You can think of your involvement in a discussion. Either you’re engaging, keeping the discussion going with your input, or disengaging, reducing your level of involvement so that it ends.