I think it is logical to see consciousness as an energy. As I've argued, energy goes past to future, like consciousness, while the perceptions, emotions, and thoughts it manifest go future to past. Think how your mind tries chasing down ideas and desires, even when it's being reflective and trying to wrap itself around its own thoughts and thinking, giving that sense of distance from ourselves. That while we are our thoughts, a moment later we are examining them, as they recede.

So in terms of convection, consciousness is the energy carrying us up, while the thoughts are the forms precipitating out. Expanding/coalescing as a constant feedback loop.

Are you sure water is any more or less tangible than consciousness and thought? We might think of it as a glass or puddle or moisture, but could you isolate it from the rest of the environment? It's about as tangible as time. That's the foolishness of materialism. That there is some sense we can pin this reality down as "normal." It's like the corollary to the old saying that, 'the more you know, the more you know you don't know,' would be that we know the most the moment we are born and spend our lives learning otherwise. Unless of course, we spend our lives building a shell around ourselves. Or accepting the box society wants us to fit into.