The Silent Morning Meditation: Riding the Donkey You Are Already On

We often wake up and immediately begin the search. Before the eyes even open fully, the separate self is already reaching for something—a better state, a quieter mind, a more profound sense of peace. We treat the early hours as a construction site where we might finally build the monument of our awakening. But we should ask ourselves: who is it that is seeking? And what could possibly be found that isn't already here? There is an old expression about searching for the donkey while you are already riding it. This is the comedy of the spiritual seeker. We look for the absolute as if it were a distant peak to be climbed, failing to notice that the very legs doing the climbing are the absolute itself. When we speak of a morning meditation, we aren't talking about a ladder to heaven. There are no steps to follow, and there is no "you" that can successfully complete a journey to where you already are. The separate self loves the idea of a path because a path implies duration, effort, and a future reward. It keeps the "me" busy with purification and progress. But liberation is not of the self; it is from the self. It is the realization that the one trying to meditate is just another appearance in the vast, aware presence that you already are. We might sit in silence for a few minutes at the start of the day. This isn't because silence is a "better" state than noise, or because it will lead us to a grand awakening process. Silence may bring comfort now, and it might make the body-mind feel more regulated, but it doesn't make you "more" enlightened. How could you become what you never stopped being? Think of the screen in a cinema. The screen is never burnt by the fire in the film, nor is it made wet by the rain. The film—the thoughts, the worries, the spiritual ambitions—appears on the screen of conscious presence. Meditation is simply a moment where we stop pretending the film is more important than the screen. In many spiritual circles, there is a lot of noise. There are voices telling you how to breathe, what to visualize, and which mantras will unlock your conscious presence. But who said you were locked? And who is this "conscious presence" separate from the one who is reading these words right now? When we sit together in the morning, we are looking for a space that exists before the words start. The absolute doesn't need a translation. A mystic once said that the language of the absolute is silence, and everything else is just a poor translation. In the group, there is a certain strength in co-regulation, a shared recognition of this silent presence that doesn't require us to exchange a single word or spiritual greeting. It is the sacredness of just being, without the performance of being "spiritual." Every morning, the same miracle happens. We emerge from deep, dreamless sleep—a state of perfect oneness where there are no separations—and the "I" begins to surface.