Thinking about 'How I am able to think of myself'

         I always have these thoughts about concepts like 'self' or 'consciousness' etc. but I never had more chances to discuss  it with others. I guess at least by jotting down some of my ideas, I will be able to make the picture clearer for myself and I can start a discussion with you people as well.
         First of all, how do we define consciousness? Is it the thought process initiated when you try to question yourself? I mean like 'who am I?' or 'What am I?' etc. All the thought processes happen inside our brain only. So, when an entity which is 'intelligent' can question itself or let's say 'realize' its existence, is it what is called consciousness? To put it in a better way, is it possible to be 'intelligent' but not 'conscious'? i.e. how do we separate intelligence and consciousness?
           A small child say of age 2-3 years is intelligent in a normal human being sense of view. But is he conscious? Is he aware of his 'existence'? Does he 'feel' his existence? I some times think we unnecessarily glorify this term called 'consciousness'. What I mean to say is, maybe this realisation of 'self' is inevitable given the presence of 'intelligence'. Maybe this is what happens in case of the 3 year old child.
           Maybe when an intelligent being(say small child) learns to distinguish between things similar to itself, the natural next step is to distinguish 'itself' from others. For this to happen, the senses through which it perceives outside world plays an important role in my opinion. Some sort of self feed-back should happen to these senses which then results in recognition of self. Take the example of  Vision. Something like say mirror might play an important role here. When the child sees the outside world it questions it, remembers it, analyzes it and takes decisions based on it. If I put a mirror before it, it will try to question it like 'Did I see it earlier?', 'What is it?' etc. When it sees itself in the mirror only, it realizes that  it is seeing 'itself'. If this is correct what are the equivalents of mirror in other senses? But does this mean a thing which is intelligent but has no senses can't be 'aware of itself'? Of course, without senses/inputs there is no point in being intelligent.
          Another basic question is how do we even test whether an intelligent thing has 'consciousness'? Does all living things like ants, birds, insects have 'consciousness'? They definitely have brain and are intelligent, for one thing.
         Another interesting aspect is if we take 'consciousness' for granted like we took 'intelligence' for granted to look at 'consciousness', emotions and other 'thoughts' attached to 'self' might be the next logical step.(or is it not?)
          Let me stop here for now. I sometimes think the most challenging thing for our race is to figure out "How we are able to figure things out" or as I like saying "How are we able to think about brain using our brain".
         When one sees all this from a still broader view like life being a negligible part in such a huge universe which is in existence from billions of years, it feels kind of weird. Once we realize how trivial our existence in this vast universe is, our everyday  worries, goals etc look comical sometimes. We fret over things like bad food in mess, stupid weather etc. Even 'big' things like 'corruption', 'war' etc seem so silly from the point of view of the universe.....
         I only wish I get answers to at least some of these questions before I 'die'(what is death anyway?).

Try to answer some of these questions...

The other day, I got bored in a class and I was thinking about life. I just jotted down a few questions in my notebook. I am just repeating what I wrote there, here. Many may sound vague or stupid. But I just wrote what I was thinking at that time. Here is what I have written:

What am I doing with my life?
What do I want from it?
What should I be doing now?
What does interest me in life?
What motivation do I have to live?
Innocence is the best quality one can have, isn't it?
We might try to achieve(& succeed) other qualities but no one can 'achieve' innocence. It is the purest form one can be in. That is why children are considered to be Gods.
What is the specialty of music?
Why does it relax us so much?
I think it is the nearest to what is 'happiness'
It is what makes us feel 'alive'
If innocence is the nearest to pure quality of life, music is nearest to pure form of life.
What drives all these millions of people around me to do what the things they daily do? Where do they find the motivation to live?

Some of them may seem absurd...But try to answer the questions. It will be nice pondering on such things....

Death

What would it be like to be a dead man? : Death is one of the things that captured my imagination a lot since my high school. I was always fascinated by death. When we are alive, we associate ourselves with our brain/body. But when we die, we no longer are thinking anything. There is nothing. I always wondered at this scenario: I died and the world goes on.... I am not there...There is no more me....It gives me goosebumps, if it is the right word I need to use. It also shows how trivial our life is in this vast universe.

soul : I think even our ancients also saw this inevitable thing called death and they cannot believe it. They were so much attached to worldly feelings and importantly they loved themselves so much that they created this concept of soul or existence of life after death to convince themselves that all we do in our life span has some effect in this universe. If really there is a soul in every living thing, how do you explain the increasing population of all living things(not necessarily human)?

Doubt : People say our brain works(neurons keep firing signals) for 20 minutes even after one dies. What do they mean by this? Doesn't dying imply brain stopped working? Maybe, they mean that our heart stopped beating. But I guess we can give electric shock and make the heart beat again even it stopped for a few seconds,right? You do not say the person is dead those seconds and then came back to life. Then shouldn't we declare the person dead only after the neurons stopped firing?