In my opinion, I think a good place to start for defining the threshold for Aware is deciding what the gameplay differences will be between Macroscopic and Aware, then figuring out what the player’s species needs to interact with the Aware mechanics.
For example, we don’t want to say “congratulations, you’ve become aware! Now, keep doing the exact same thing you were already doing because your species doesn’t have hands, so they can’t use any of the cool, hand-based mechanics of the Aware stage.”