Disclaimer: this is the rambling of a French mind, where the single word conscience embraces what the English language distinguishes as "conscience," "consciousness," "awareness," and is closely related to connaissance, "knowledge".
To this French mind "consciousness" appears as a wonderful yet bittersweet product of reflection (the specular or "mirror" metaphor being central to it). Although it is objectively related to animal sentience, our view of consciousness, I think, is entirely dependent on the seminal technique (the "technique of techniques," as French theologian Gabriel Vahanian put it) of language / symbolism (the ability to point to "things" even though absent or non-existent) and imagination (representing "things" on our inner and cultural "mind map"), from which both memory and anticipation as we know it derive. Functionally it serves a practical purpose, which is precisely technique: through this way of dealing with "things" we can "change" them. But the "flip" side (perhaps accidental after all) is "consciousness".
According to Lacan, we function in a threefold sphere where perception of the real is immediately assumed by representation with "words" and "ideas" (abstract forms in the mind). In the midst of this representative structure the human "subject" emerges as sapiens sapiens -- he that knows that he knows... the play of reflection is potentially infinite and the subject can "know" everything but himself. "Observe" he who knows that he knows and you instantly become "he who knows that he knows that he knows"... think of that and you get one step further (or recede one step back)... and so on.
Our "bliss" or "woe" is woven into this reflective play. No pleasure or suffering matters to us until we are "conscious" of it. And as soon as we distance ourselves from it through an additional turn (or strata) of reflection it doesn't matter anymore (or much less). This is fun -- we have become addicted to it. This is also tiresome. Yet we can hardly envision anything without projecting that type of "consciousness" onto it. We read it into the gods, God, universal soul/mind or whatever. It had to be there before "we" were, it has to be there after "we" are gone. And if we don't share in it (and know we do, and know we know we do) it isn't worth it. When the mystics posit another type of "consciousness" -- especially with superlatives like "supra-consciousness", are they breaking free from the game or just playing it one step further (or back)? Can we accept the possibility of anything out of this "bubble" of consciousness -- even the last pebble in the remotest galaxy? Can we relate to it without trying to annex it into our consciousness, or, perhaps, smearing it with our consciousness? The only alternative to ever-expanding consciousness, where we'll end up projecting our image on everything until we get sick of it, seems to be conscious, ek-static poetry, where we accept, from within consciousness as it were, difference from consciousness.
It sometimes seems to me that we are caught in an insomniac's nightmare (oxymoron intended). We're afraid to "fall" "out" of consciousness -- no matter how painful consciousness may be. Even into the Buddhist nirvâna we can't help reading some consciousness -- and ironically miss the point.
When I was a little boy I was afraid to go to sleep in the dark -- of course it was dark only until I fell asleep. As much as I have enjoyed the game of consciousness, I'm no longer afraid.