I think that is a bit of a misleading way of putting it because the feeling being a “self” that is in charge of the body is an experience that is contained within consciousness rather than the essential nature of it; in principle, one could imagine having consciousness without any feeling of being a “self” at all.

If I had to define the nature of consciousness, I would say that it is essentially an internal simulation that the brain creates in order to aggregate information from various sources in order to facilitate processing and decision making. Just to be clear, this is not my own original idea, and more importantly I do not think that it is a particularly clever or deep way of thinking about consciousness, but rather the inevitable conclusion one reaches when one plays around with one’s own attention and awareness and sees what happens; the trick is just to do it like a scientist and be constantly challenging one’s own conclusions, rather than to invent one’s own version of chakras. I find it especially enlightening to watch what the mind does when one tries not to steer it into doing anything; with some practice, it is possible to watch the “self” pretend to be in charge while simultaneously realizing it is not, and this experience can be helpful (though frustratingly I have not found it to be as immediately life-changing as I might have hoped).