New to Gnosis. Having troubles maintaining concentration. Tips for improving concentration?

<p>I have been practicing meditation and learning gnosis for one year now, and only very recently, I have been able to clearly identify the greatest obstacle in my inner work. It is lack of proper concentration.<br /> <br /> In my practice of self observation, I have gotten to the point where I can observe with good duration, but it pulls me away from my 5 senses, and leaves me acting like i'm "spaced out" or "not in the present moment", or docile. Although, when in social interaction I am almost completely unable to self observe at all, because of the speed conversations travel at, is so much faster, only my <a href="faqs/psychology/1761-what-is-ego.html" target="_parent" title="In spiritual tradition, ">ego</a>'s are able to keep up with this speed. I am only able to see, after the fact, that my reactions are mechanical, but it feels like in the moment, I had no control at all, or that I couldn't concentrate on observing my thoughts before saying them.<br />  <br /> Because of my lack of concentration, the only meditations I can seem to do effectively, is mantras, and Egyptian pranayama and in my morning meditations, it results in astral projection at least once a month, but the problem is, the presence of my <a href="faqs/psychology/1761-what-is-ego.html" target="_parent" title="In spiritual tradition, ">ego</a>'s are so heavy, my concentration is so dull it makes everything blurry, confusing, and really hard to interpret the message. The only time I have useful astral experiences are when I invoke the divine mother, and she helps me, or shows me something that I need to see, but my ability to travel in the astral without assistance of divinities is rooted in my lack of concentration.  As well, it seems that lately, my practices of in the morning meditations, are starting to become mechanical, and loosing effectiveness, I feel as though I am starting to loose hold of the only practices that have ever worked for me.<br /> <br /> I feel as if, my inner being, only gave me these initial experiences just to show that astral projection is possible, to prevent me from leaving the gnostic path, because I can't seem to get back to the point I was in the past, where I astrally projected every morning for 5 days in a row. <br /> <br /> I have tried the basic techniques: focusing on heartbeat, and focusing on breath, and focusing on candle, but it seems ineffective that always the same thing happens:<br /> -I either fall 'asleep' or enter into 'conceptualization' or 'forget myself' and loose any sense of self awareness<br /> -or My mind drifts away and cannot concentrate for more then 4 minutes before I completely loose concentration, and forget that I'm meditating.<br /> <br /> I feel like I have attention deficit disorder when I meditate, and it makes my meditations frustrating at times because it feels like I haven't made any progress at all, or that my progress is going backwards.. <br /> <br /> I'm looking for some good basic meditation practices to get past the first stage of the nine mental states "1. Placement, or Fixing the mind"  or possibly an insight as to what the problem is, and why I can't seem to concentrate without mantras.  <br /><br />Also, what would you recommend for a new initiate to do in the astral, for purposes of strengthening concentration, and practices to help better understand how to use their astral body? Since it is completely spontaneous and unexpected, when I arrive in the astral, I usually don't know what to do next, and it results in me losing concentration.</p>