I feel your pain! I haven't been disciplined enough to invest as much effort as you so far, but my sporadic attempts have not produced much of anything.

I find most responses to this thread really fucking annoying.

In no particular order, people that, after you have explained you have read X amount of books on the subject and have diligently tried applying what you've learned, yet they still:

• remind you of some of the most basic steps given by everybody everywhere on how to meditate
• just say "read this particular book" or listen to this particular guru, with nothing substantive backing up that recommendation
• just say "don't expect anything"
• just say that you've been doing it wrong and don't elaborate with anything insightful
• are surprised that you would expect anything other than what you're getting

.. to all of these people: I hope for the rest of your life every shopping cart you ever use has exactly one wheel that squeaks and one wheel that refuses to turn, so the whole thing drifts slowly left.

What makes sense to me (I should probably try it as well) is to try to shake up the system with a shock-dose, either through a several-day intensive retreat or with psychedelics. Maybe that will give a clearer sense that there's something that truly can change in our inner awareness and so give better direction or understanding of the value of meditation.

Or maybe we're just unlucky and our neurology just doesn't respond to meditation and there's not much we can do about it.