When you said you were writing a post about consciousness this was not where I thought it was going to go.
Which isn't to say what you've said is wrong - I don't think anyone does really know what's going on re: why we have consciousness and what it really is.
There is something very appealling, in an intuitive way, to connecting our conscious experience with ancient/universally applicable ideas and observations. It gives me a certain comfort to know people almost unchanged from me have been dealing with the same impossible questions for millenia.
Having said that - we are getting closer, inch by hard fought inch, to decoding the brain and the profound complexity it represents. I can't help but feel - and maybe even hope? - that in the coming decades we may have answers sufficiently concrete to end the age old cycle of human mysticism.
(Side note though - once you answer all the "hows" you're still left with the "whys" so perhaps mine is a false hope)
(Side note 2 - it is pretty funny when you think about it how close simulation theory is to creationism in some of its core theories for the existence of the universe)
From my perspective, 'having consciousness' is (like a Zen master might say) like biting one's own teeth.. We don't have consciousness, we are that consciousness, and it is us. It is that infinite, paradoxical, and mysterious yet experienced fully every moment.
The reason that science is no closer to answering the question of what is consciousness after so many years of neuroscience and mapping of the brain and nervous system is that it doesn't seem to be localized to the brain. Things like out of body experiences, near death experiences and astral projection show us that it is separate from the body and only inhabits the body temporarily.