Earth –> Day-waking (i.e. ‘normal’ adult) consciousness 
Water –> Imaginative consciousness 
Air —-> Inspirational consciousness 
Fire —> Intuitive consciousness  

Earth –> Thinking ‘about’ – object-oriented 
Water –> Thinking ‘with’ – process oriented 
Air —-> Thinking ‘between’ – polarity-oriented, (Brad exemplifies this very well) 
Fire —-> Thinking ‘as’ – whole-oriented  

Further, considering that all thinking is relational, and all relations are between beings:  

Earth –> consciousness of other as if the other was an object (separation) 
Water –> consciousness of other as if you were dreaming into the other’s experience, as if you were ‘seeing’ in an inner way the other’s perspective 
Air —-> consciousness of other “as if” you were the other from the inside, as if you were ‘hearing’ in an inner way the tonality of the other’s experience 
Fire —> consciousness of other AS the other, as if the other were living through and into you directly, with almost no distinction between who is who  

The sequence is one which lays out the polarities between separation and coincidence of self and other.  Goethe made a strong case for the Water, or process, level of experiencing with his morphological studies of plants and his scientific work (particularly optics).

Earth, Water, Air, and Fire