Hey guys,

I want to start meditating but I'm not sure where to start. There aren't (or at least there doesn't appear to be) many good books on places like amazon that cover meditation in the way I want to learn it (just a bunch of meditation for therapy and meditation for yoga, bleh), so let me outline the benefits I'd like to receive from meditation and hopefully this will help guide your responses and give you guys some insight into what kind of meditation would work best for me.

I want to meditate to help control my mind. I want to be able to focus better and harder (basically concentrate my mental attention better), I want to be able to define a sort of "neutral" mind state that I can meditate briefly and return to (a method of emotional control, could help to hold frame in life), and I want to be able to meditate on my long term goals and help bring myself clarity as to how to tackle them/overcome obstacles.

Those are the three things I'm mainly interested in honing in my mind and I'd really appreciate any advice on what to start with, where to go to learn more, or what types of meditation/exercises I should look into learning about. If anyone has any solid literary recommendations I'd absolutely love that too.

I've started trying to meditate in a way that feels natural to me, but I have no idea if this is actually going to be the most efficient, timely way to achieve my goals. So far what I've been doing for meditation the past couple days (I've only started recently but I am determined to see this through and turn meditation into something that is very fruitful for my life) is focus on controlling my breathing, controlling my mind and restraining that energetic, scattered feeling of being unable to relax and focus, and basically just sitting upright on the floor or in the grass and staring at a fixed point for 15 minutes straight while trying to control my mind. I really have no idea if this is the best way to meditate, but I'm of the attitude to just jump in and start getting your hands dirty and then figuring out stuff rather than being a pussy and waiting for the perfect teaching resource to come my way.

Thanks a bunch!