Good luck.
If your experience is anything like mine, you will acquire moments of silence. Along the way, you might experience times when the activity of your mind during meditation is unbearable. Just keep in mind that this is pretty normal. It can feel like you're going crazy, but you're not. I don't know if the best response is to keep going or just to stop and pour all that energy into some activity. Probably the latter, doing the former when I used to meditate absolutely sucked.
Right now I am not sure if the silence thing is really all it's cracked up to be.
Have your seen Children of Men?
There's a scene in the movie when some pretty heavy stuff is going down, and this new-agey character and this girl start chanting in order to deal with it. It's pretty apparent that they can't handle the situation and are trying to hide behind their mantras rather than be awake, aware, alive, responsive, and deal with the situation.
The most zen-like person around is the main character who is staying completely involved in the situation. Without him the others would be dead, and, perhaps, the future of the human race lost.
I am growing pretty skeptical of this self-contradictory notion that going away inside is the same thing as being deeply involved. I think it's probably the opposite. I don't know. Devices involving fixation seem pretty suspect to me now.
I'd advise quiet observation of everything around you, letting your awareness flow and your responses occur, rather than fixating on a mantra or centering your focus on your breathing. Your body will achieve homeostasis on its own. You don't need to focus or make yourself center or anything.
Just my current opinion on it.
