"A challenge here is what do you mean by consciousness"

Absolutely, it's hard to put a description to it. Which is another reason for my confusion for the distinction between us and the rest of life. If we were going to create any sort of spectrum of consciousness it would be inherently biased. Imagine us humans created a consciousness spectrum and put dolphins, whales and elephants at the top and us mid-way ;)

Our hubris wouldn't allow it! Which is why I'm suggesting if particles are conscious (the basic building blocks of all life) then everything would be imbued with the same level of inherent consciousness. Only our abilities to subjectively experience would differ. As in a subjective experience of being a human vs the experience of being a dolphin vs life as a tree. What if an inherently conscious universe is gaining infinite experience by creating life to have various forms of experience to garner the whole experience that is life. All life is conscious, it's just the ego's that differ...

"As human beings I think we can all agree that there are times when we are more conscious and more free, how does this relate to other life and things?"

I agree! However, this is again our subjective critique of ourselves calling us more or less free at times, more or less aware. I don't know if this changes our inherent level of consciousness. But, maybe it does? Maybe we are able to alter our fundamental level of awareness and affect the level of awareness of the atoms that comprise us at the time (as they are always changing).

"how does this relate to other life and things?"

I have no idea! I look at other life, some seemingly more aware than others. But, that of course is all based on my own subjective and biased opinions of consciousness.

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 ;)

So much to Hive account@contemplate.