Your ideas while discerning things show your consciousness and an awareness of your surroundings. You not only know that you have ideas, but you think about them and discern them.

意識 is often used in relation to whether someone has consciousness or not, like in medical contexts or news stories. In other contexts it can refer to being aware of certain things, like a high awareness of environmental issues.

This is a jukugo word, which usually means on'yomi readings from the kanji. If you know the readings of your kanji you'll know how to read this as well.