2. Meditation has side benefits of helping with concentration problems, sleep issues, maybe even some psychological issues (there's a lot on it if you google 'meditation and neuro-science').
However, the original and main purpose of meditation was what is called "liberation" or awakening or enlightenment. Along the way, the grip of the fictional mind-created entity called the "self" or "me" weakens and at some stage just collapses. In a few cases this happens suddenly with no practice (e.g. Eckhart Tolle, Sri Ramana Maharshi). What happens further you will just have to experience yourself but this much I can say: as the false self or "ego" weakens and loses control, suffering also reduces and a time comes when you know that mental suffering is over for you.
There is far too much material on this. You can spend a whole life just reading (and as a result yourself get nowhere). Everyone will have their favorite books or resources or people. I would recommend Power of Now by Tolle as a very accessible book. There is also Sri Nisargadatta (I am That, and many other works, available on the internet freely in text/pdf form).
Most threads on HN recommend mindfulness and give you links to documents for that. Mindfulness puts the attention on the body and thus takes it away from the mental process. The references I gave (similarly) take the attention away from mind to what is present or aware (without going to the body). So these approaches still have a lot in common.
Whichever route you take, it is important to start practicing (stilling the mind) asap, and not get caught in the reading trap.
My distractions are usually self-inflicted so the outside world doesn't need to do much (just having a book or sock in the wrong place is enough). So I've started listening to white noise a lot of time (I.E. The 10 hour track http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcJ-o_fh1B4) which does help somewhat while working.
What helped me the most so far are breathing exercises. Focusing on breathing is a deceptively simple way to get your mind to sit still for a bit before heading back to work. But it's not just thinking "inhale, exhale".
You have to imagine air as a amorphous blob of light. When you inhale, imagine this lighting up the pathway as it enters your nostrils, sinus cavity, bronchial and your lungs. Now when your inhalation is complete, your lungs are full of light. As you exhale, the light leaves the lungs back the way it came (I keep the inhale-exhale cycle at about 3 to 4 seconds).
I started with just 1 minute at first (that was the maximum I could devote before my mind wandered off) and now I'm up to about 30 minutes when I have time.
The OCD has come down to manageable levels. The insomnia is down a bit too, although I'm making plans to see someone about light-therapy to hopefully "cure" it.
I've even been known to meditate in pretty crowded places as well. People find it weird, but you gotta go when you gotta go!! :)
In those kinds of quantities you get discontinuous results, but it's a PhD's worth of effort for some fairly intangible rewards. If anybody has questions, ask away.
1.) Concentration Meditation calms my mind and allows it to settle so that the important thoughts can rise to the top more easily when I'm NOT meditating.
2.) Insight Meditation helps to increase the time between stimulus and my response to such stimuli, allowing me to respond mindfully rather than totally driven by conditioned reaction or instinct.
