Imagine us humans created a consciousness spectrum and put dolphins, whales and elephants at the top and us mid-way ;)

Yes, and the steemian whales and dolphins would like to think so, lol. All of those animals are quite remarkable.

"everything would be imbued with the same level of inherent consciousness"

Well stated, but 'higher order intelligence' might emerge/manifest such as cells vs molecules vs atoms etc. I would say that everything is sacred at its most intrinsic level.

What do you think of calling consciousness 'own true selves' this level we obtain from time to time when we rid ourselves from the programming. Our consciousness is that voice inside our head that gets upset with the brain for overplaying a song ;)

I think the subjective aspect needs to be understood as well, perhaps the material/energy aspect is the outer aspect and consciousness is the inner aspect or dimension and they complement each other like 2 sides of a coin. It is like our physical body and possible energy body or bodies is a ladder and consciousness is the awareness of the rung and the climber - separate sense of I.

I think that at our deepest levels, the subjective and the objective are experienced as both one and two, a multiplicity contained in an unity.

But these words are from one instance of a self that is subjective... :) And another hates the replaying of a song and another steps back from looking at the computer screen and asks who am I?

So much to contemplate indeed.