I meditate on the train ride home. I listen to insight timer for 20 minutes… sound can be a drone, monks, ocean crashing. What I discovered was the importance of the mantra. It needs to be a meaningless set of syllables. This helps your brain not think about the meaning of a mantra with actual words and get distracted. With practice you start to be able to shut down conscious thought and then reach almost a dream state. I was able to do it once so far for a couple minutes towards the end of a 20 minute session. It was pretty amazing… it was like a dream sequence but in fast forward but I felt like I fell asleep. When I was done I felt like I had taken a nap. From what I have read you can get to a very deep state of mediation that is more restorative than deep sleep. I’m hoping to work at this to counter my severe insomnia and stop taking so many different sleeping pills. I believe this will also promote brain healing.
As for paying for a teacher… thats the downside of TM. It appears to be heavily ingrained with this money making side of it. Thats why they tell you to never share your mantra. Thats all BS from what I can tell. The original mantras were sayings from Sanscrit. From what I gather, once you understand the purpose of the mantra and how to develop one that works, you have learned all there is and you then just need to practice. The mantra can litterally be any gibberish that you like… some gibberish on the breath in… some different gibberish on the breath out.