Hello,

I would like to share my meditation experience with you and eventually get your feedback. It is important for me to know if I progress in the right direction. I have no guru next to me and no one to ask about this. I appreciate your help. I'll try to be as brief as possible.

I begin with breath awareness to calm down my wild mind. I do alternate nostril breathing to balance the Ida and Pingala flows. Then I bring my attention on between the two nostrils being mindful about the air going in and out in equal flows. Of course my mind starts to wander but I gently bring back the attention to the nostrils. I keep that for sometime (~10 mins) until the distracting thoughts reduce and become clearer (meaning I quickly realize that a though has appeared and dragged my attention so I can bring it back). As next, I drop the attention from the breath and focus on watching the thoughts. Here comes the fun.
Not sure if this explains the best but I focus on the focus. In other words I concentrate and watch for thoughts. Thoughts do not appear one after another but there is a space in between. When a thought comes it drags my attention away. In the next moment I realize I'm thinking and make an attempt to ignore it. With no attention on it it quickly fades away. And so on and so on...

Here comes the tricky part. Two distinct things I can do:
a) I continue to apply attention and focus which reduces the thoughts to a minimum. BUT this is because I keep my attentions on the focus so I block the thoughts this way. The most readings about mindfulness meditation say that this is wrong as this suppresses the thoughts.
b) I apply less attention but still stay aware. This opens the door for thoughts and they more or less drags my attention. So I guess even though these thoughts are there I should somehow be aware of them and ignore them...?
Also this state gets me deeper and visual images start to appear in addition to thoughts. I enter into hypnagogia state. The flow of thoughts and visual images drags me in. Regaining the attention stops the imagery.

The question is which path I should pursue - a) or b). The second, looks like to right one and definitely a lot more interesting. But is this aligned with Meditation or looks more like a kind of a trance state?

Thanks,
Atanas