Meditation is the art of staying in this present moment. A sleepy person either lives in the past moment or is dreaming about the future life. But a meditator stays in this present moment and is alert about his thoughts and actions.
There are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall-not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains.
A racing mind that reacts sensitively to little things indicates thinking that has lost its spiritual strength. Meditation restores that power.
Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious. Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don't go on reading all kinds of nonsense.
Passing through the fire of meditation, everything that is not your authentic reality, everything that is borrowed, will be burned away.