Wordpress mod_rewrite

I’ve just installed wordpress into the directory /wordpress/

I’ve also set the permalinks to custom: /%postname%/

what i want to do is this:

whenever i type www.mydomain.com/index.php, i want it to look for www.mydomain.com/wordpress/index.php and completely skip the main directory. or if i type www.mydomain.com, it’ll go to www.mydomain.com/wordpress/

here is what i currently have in the .htaccess

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteRule ^index\\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wordpress/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

i have also tried

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteRule ^index\\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

i don’t want a redirect, meaning when a user types “www.mydomain.com” onto their address bar, i don’t want the address bar to redirect them and say “www.mydomain.com/wordpress” i want a rewrite. please help.

301 redirect in htaccess

Redirect 301 /index.html http://example.com/newdirectory/