For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well.
Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads:
The first thing to understand is that books on meditation are not going to help you all that much. This is not something you try to understand intellectually. It is experiential. You are much better off attempting to practice. If you need help with practice, there are various groups and flavors of mindfulness meditation: vipassana, zen, insight, etc. There's going to be a flavor, and a group of people with whom it will feel right.
Barring that, hacker_9's suggestion of the Meditation sub-reddit is not bad. My suggestion though is to ignore the people talking about theory -- practice, find people who practice, and allow the issues and observations to surface up from there. It's a kind of empirical inquiry into yourself where you drive the discussion through your observations, rather than the other way around.
Now having said that, the most generic book on helping you practice meditation that I recommend is Mindfulness in Plain English. You can find this for free online.
I have also heard about Calm and Headspace apps and knew people who tried it. They are probably not a bad way to start -- though like all things, it comes and goes, and there will come a time to drop it and move on.
Traditional Buddhist teachings don't necessarily get into the psychological aspects of it. Or let me be more precise: the psychological descriptions don't seem to resonate well with Westerners, and is typically dismissed as part of empty ceremonies, or pre-modern descriptions of psychology. (For example: what does the Padme Family or the element of Air have anything to do with your day-to-day life?)
So a meditation practice can be paired with therapy, and will work very well if the therapist also practices.
That leads to the other book I would recommend, since people are interested in healing their neurotic patterns. There is a great book whose technique complements mindfulness meditation: Tsultrim Allione's "Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict". This book distilled out an older practice in a way that combines with gestalt therapy and presented in a way that is much more accessible for people who grew up in the West. Like the tradition it comes from, although the full method uses visualization methods, it ends with mindfulness meditation. Along with a regular practice of meditation, it's a great way to deliberately gain some insight into your subconscious.
Hope that helps.
I was reading through your posts and saw this: "The second is this: when Shakti pierces the 4th chakra and/or the hrit padma (below it) ... you'll gain a kind of "compass". From there on out, you'll always have a way of checking which path to go. It might mean staying with kundalini yoga, it might not be. The journey getting to the center involves piercing through the 2nd ganthri, learning to surrender. It will be like peeling an onion. You'll cry. A lot. And you'll know it is worth it."
This is related to kundalini yoga? Any recommendations on how to get started there?
Believe or not, you can get in touch with this heart experience that going to evangelical Christian revivals (there are some severe shadow sides related to this, however, there are Christian mystics around) or go attend kirtans. There are shamanic methods. Or just go to a rave and really open up your heart while dancing. Mindful prayers, asking to be guided into this will be heard.
Email me sometime. Maybe in the course of talking, what you say will remind me of a path that may really resonate with you.
Rather, it's the avoidance of unhappy emotions and thoughts that create distortions, leading to neurotic emotional and mental patterns. These emotions and thoughts will arise on their own regardless of how you try to suppress them (and often times, suppressing them will make them grow stronger).
The basic practice is very simple at it's core: what arises will arises, what passes will pass. So when it arises, you allow it to arise -- and remain aware. When it passes, you let it go -- and remain aware.
As things that have normally been suppressed start surfacing up, it's as if you are "sweating out" these toxic thoughts. It will get worse before it gets better.
It goes deeper than that, since detoxifying isn't the ultimate aim either. It's the direct experience that what you think of as "self" is really an illusion. It's only after that, that things start get really interesting.
The illusion of self is a big deal in Buddhism and it can be confusing and daunting at first, but the concept behind it is really not that difficult to grasp. (Putting it into practice is a different challenge!)
One analogy I like to use is that of an automobile. The individual parts - the engine, the wheels, the chassis, the steering wheel, the gears etc - are all necessary, but individually, none of them are the car themselves. No one would look at a seat and say "that's a nice car!" Yet, we do just that in our daily lives.
We experience anxiety and fear and say "that's ME!". We go through several bodily experiences as "I, me, mine". (Which is NOT the same as saying this body is not you. Think of the car analogy. The tears are happening to you, but the tears are NOT YOU.)
Therefore, in all Buddhist traditions, we are taught to view all experiences as fundamentally lacking any self. This body, this experience, this thought, this taste/smell/touch, nothing has the self. Those are all beautiful but empty experiences.
Hope this answered your "illusion of self" question at least partly.
That's not the illusion I was talking about though. It's one thing to read about that, but it's quite another to directly experience this. Like @kordless said, this is a repeatable process where you can see this for yourself. (And there's a great book written by a neuroscientist who also practices mindful meditation, and wrote about these two perspectives).
This is also not limited to the Buddhist tradition, though the sutrayana Buddhist teaches this as the primary thing and speaks the loudest about it. (There are ... realms, let's just say, beyond no-self and emptiness).
There's a verse from one of Mitten & Deva Premal's songs that describe some of this bliss well:
I stood alone at the gateless gate
too drunk on love to hesitate
To the winds I cast my fate
and the remnants of my fear.
To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example.
But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.