I am really early on, and maybe these questions are thinking too hard about this. But I wanted to clarify some things that I am struggling to verify for myself for my own understanding:.

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1. the difference between noticing a thought and it disappearing vs suppressing thoughts. One of the biggest things i think I have gained from mindfulness so far was being cognizant of being lost in thoughts, even when I never before explicitly knew that I was, and that I do not have to give them any more importance than they deserve/that they can make situations substantially worse if I was unaware that I was thinking. Sam uses language a lot of 'where do the thoughts go?'. I notice that when I notice I am in thought, the thoughts quite literally disappear/dissolve and do not drag out. I felt at first that this is just what I am supposed to notice about them--that thoughts arising are no different than hearing a car outside of the voice in the app, and they appear and disappear as we notice them. But I have been wondering -- is this actually how it 'works'? Thoughts just appear and do not necessarily have any meaning more substantially than hearing a noise outside, and then disappear just as quickly on their own. Is the only reason they can keep going is we let them and almost 'pull' them forward longer than they normally would? So just by noticing I am thinking, I am no longer actively riding the thoughts out and so they just vanish ? I am not sure if this makes sense, but I have started to question that perhaps I am noticing and then repressing/suppressing thoughts as they arise. I have been playing around with a deliberate suppressing vs just noticing to see for myself if I can discriminate between the two, but it has been a bit difficult to do so.
2. For the non-duality: Sam here will sometimes say that he is not making a metaphysical claim, so maybe this is confusing me because I am turning it into one, but I am curious if I am in the beginnings of understanding what exactly this is all about. Often he says something of the sort: 'consciousness is the prior condition'. I think I have had glimpses of this where if I say look at my hand, hear an alarm/car, feel a strong sense of frustration/happiness -- these things are always appear first divorced from any thought at all, but then in mere milliseconds(or less) my thoughts will 'characterize' or 'conceptualize' what I am experiencing. Is this another form of being lost in thought without knowing I am lost in thought, and is this what I 'should' start noticing about my experience as I start to understand the non-duality of experience?