Hi clueless and welcome to the Project Meditation community,
As Karmoh says, download the free Discover Meditation course and take a listen, it'll guide you through all you need to know to get started with meditation.
In short, no, you don't have to sit with your legs crossed, just ensure you are sitting comfortably and usually best to avoid sitting somewhere where the head is suppored as this is conducive to making the body want to relax into sleep (likewise if you try meditating lying down, though some people find they can do that).
The room doesn't have to be completely quite, but for a beginner it probably helps, just to remove any external distractions that could occur. Quite is usually preferable, but I've meditated e.g. in the middle of a room full of people who were chatting and eating their lunch, during a break in a course I was attending without any problem.
If you focus on there being a goal to meditation, then you will set your mind to think about this goal and then that thought will keep going round in your head and that will sort of get in the way of reaching a deep meditative state. Listen to the free course, and use a mantra; the purpose of which is to help detract your from your thoughts, and eventually you will experience a complete awareness where the mantra may or may not be repeating to itself, and the thoughts are just something in the awareness, but not something you're focused on or care about. It's not possible to describe the state of meditation in words, it's only something that can be experienced personally. We all experience this state sometimes in our daily lives, but just fail to recognise it for what it is, and with meditation practice this can happen more frequently. It can take practice, and at first you may only get the odd brief sense of complete awareness because the mind will likely do something like jump in with "Ooo, let me grab hold of that sense" which then brings you back to that thought and brings you out of the awareness itself. That's ok though, just keep practicing and it will become easier.
Any questions, just ask.
Hugs
Giles
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Hi I'm new and want to learn how to meditate
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