In my view, in order to discuss and to answer this question we must first define what’s meant by consciousness. See it by working backwards...

One way of looking at consciousness is to say that consciousness is All That Is. In other words consciousness IS the single, holistic, fundamental, primary reality and therefore, everything else that IS springs forth from the One consciousness. Consciousness being All That Is cannot be added to or subtracted from, because it remains whole and indivisible, eternally.

I believe that you’re asking:

How we can become more aware of consciousness or more consciously aware (?)

By understanding (remembering) that from our current, limited, perspective of consciousness, obviously we’re not fully aware of the totality of the consciousness that we’re a part. We chose to incarnate into a reality that’s currently dominated by people who are firm believers in the supremacy of reason and logic; people who’ve forgotten who they really are at their core.

Their parents believed that reason and logic are the be all and end all of life, it was all they knew, and most people simply go along with that self-imposed and self-limiting belief system. Thus, most people have not realized that rationality, reason and logic are merely tools used by consciousness in order to navigate within this particular physical reality. And that even our physical body is an illusional tool that we’ve manifested in order to navigate through this reality.

However, this is the transformational age in which, more and more people are beginning to wake up to the truth of who they really are; the age in which it’s easier to see through limitation. Everyone, who’s in charge of their faculties, has free will to decide and to choose whether they’ll wake up within this dream state that we call reality and to realize that it is a dream. Or they can decide and choose to continue their experience of physical reality as if it’s the one and only true reality.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
William Shakespeare - Hamlet

How is it done?

By relaxing our prejudices and our firm, fixed, definitions and beliefs of such ideas as what’s real and what’s not, what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good and what’s bad etcetera, we begin to awaken to the truth of who we really are. By simply asking from the perspective of humbly not knowing, we’re allowing for an unbiased answer to be downloaded into our consciousness, thereby expanding it.

Once we begin to realize that, aside from the One consciousness, all realities are illusional in nature and that it’s only our experience of any particular, illusional, reality that’s real; then our consciousness begins to expand and so we become more consciously aware. And in the process of becoming more consciously aware, more of who we are, fundamentally, at our root, becomes apparent to us.

What are the benefits of attaining it?

It’s more a case of remembering than of attaining. You are already everything, you are All That Is, but in order to experience the limitations of this physical reality, it was necessary for you to forget the totality of your being, so you agreed to forget. That’s why I like to view life on earth as a game of remembering, whilst having as much fun on that journey as possible :)

Suffix to say that: whereas previously you may have been living in fear, stumbling around in the dark, bumping into people and killing each other due to not being able to see each other clearly. Now, you have more light by which you can see your path clearly. So you choose to shine your light, by simply being who you’re being, so that others may find their path and in so doing, they'll shine their light also.

I could go on and on about the benefits of being more consciously aware. In fact the benefits are so numerous that I could write an entire website about them, oh, but wait, I already did :) You see, humor is also a part of consciousness and not separate from it. What, don’t you believe that God also enjoys a good laugh?

In a nutshell, being more consciously aware simply means that you begin to lighten up and see that whereas previously, you thought you were apart from God, now you realize that you're a part of God 8-)

Expanding consciousness means changing your point of view from one to many. You can be a third person, or second. You could be an observer from outer space. The point of view is totally up to you. by changing views, you get the overall truth, instead of a one pointed truth.