Try thinking about how consciousness, as a fancy kind of behavior/behavior control, benefits the organism, so that it is a condition that is selected for and stays around.
To me, this is a biological problem, to basically produce adapative control of the body and its behavior.
Consciousness will have some kind of benefit (like better understanding what is going on, or what you can do).
I like to consider it possible ways it might have evolved, thus how it got built.
And what were the selective forces on them at different times.
As animals evolved, they started moving around. The requires control mechanisms to control muscles (motor controls of a motor nervous system). It also has to generate patterns of muscle activity to generate useful behaviors (which will be selected, when present).
This can be done with very simple nervous systems (like a worm's (some are microscopic)).
As the body grows more complex with additional body parts to control, particular parts of the nervous system expand to meet the need for innervation. There is also a sensory innervation, collecting various sensory inputs, in an organized way from different body parts. Some of this is sensing body conditions and locations which can feedback and control neural activity.
This kind of a nervous system (a worm, or maybe a polycheate worm (has little "legs"), or a velvet worm (has big legs)) is enough to generate simple, un-directed movement, which would have a low adaptive value (it wouldn't be worth much wrt producing successful offspring).
Something with a worm level of organization will have a front end and back end (direction of digestion through a tubular gut). Its predetermined direction of movement also determines where it is most important to sense (where you are going).
Sensory organs would develop on the front end to direct the movement generated in the other parts of the nervous system. (head determines where the worm goes)
More processing required, bigger nervous system evolves.
The front of the nervous system becomes the brain.
Next (or concurrently) they would likely generate general map of things locally around its body.
Than it would generate a map things further away, possibly using distance senses, like vision.
Things like flies can do this. Some of them have brains smaller than a pinhead.
Eventually, it would be able to make and access maps of the local areas they occupy, and the pathways between them.
Honeybees can do this.
I think of consciousness as a self-generated self image (based on your nervous systems sensing of itself and some built in neural mechanisms), that (in your head) tests out possibilities, within it's very complex model it has built up of its physical surroundings.
Simple animals can make simple versions of these kinds of maps. People do it more complexly adn to greater depth.
This is the interaction of an informational representation of the outside world (the stage), and the entity (the actor, whose behaviors will be selected), with the goal of favoring their own success (ultimately reproduction).
A selective mechanism to better choose information from the complex mix of environmental and body information, will have to be directed (by self or not) somewhere to maximize effectiveness.
The nervous system can not examine in detail, every little neural twitch. Not enough processing power.
It has to be picky about what gets the focus of important parts of its functioning (and where it puts its limited amounts of energy) within the nervous system.
Being conscious, (seems to me to) be being the observant thing (a very complex information structure exploring the nervous system's image of its surroundings), within the nervous system's overall functioning.
If I wanted to I would argue that the consciousness experienced by people is probably also experienced by a lot of other animals. To differing levels.
