>clearly, in your examples some entity is thinking (and even makes decisions) about your internal chatter and must therefore be more than just pure consciousness. Or is it just an additional layer of chatter?

Doesn't have to be either. A part can watch the whole (even itself perhaps). Like our head+eyes+brain can examine our whole body in a mirror (or just looking at our hands, legs, torso, and so on). If we had more movable eyes (like some animals) an eye could turn around and directly examine the other eye too...

I was having thoughts about my own behavior one time and realized that the hamster (meta thinker) was getting out of hand. My internal dialog went "we need to tell him to go..." the words "sit in the corner for a while" never came through because it was indeed "him" reaching that conclusion and he took action during the thought. My mind was quite after that.

This shit is weird.