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. First, it is just a raw sense of existing, a pure "I am" that hasn't yet been tethered to a name, a history, or a set of problems. It is just here; it is just now. But very quickly, the mind begins to construct the walls. It builds a "before" and an "after," creating the illusion of time. It builds a "here" and a "there," creating the illusion of space. And suddenly, we are no longer the totality; we are a small, separate self in a big, dangerous world, looking for a way back to the peace we think we lost. But the peace was never lost. It is the background, like the silence that underlies every noise. The noise doesn't destroy the silence; it relies on it to be heard. In the same way, your separate self, with all its neuroses and its desire for morning meditation, is a perfect expression of the absolute. Even the exploitation, the mistakes, and the feeling of being "distracted from being" are all parts of the totality. There is no outside to the absolute. If you are meditating, that is the absolute meditating. If you are failing to meditate and feeling guilty about it, that is the absolute being guilty. The idea that we must "attain" something is the ultimate distraction. We think we are cleaning the kitchen of the mind so that the light of the absolute can finally shine in. But the light is what allows you to see the mess in the first place. You don't need to put the room in order to prove that the sun is shining. The clouds don't create the sun, and when they clear, they haven't "achieved" the sun. They simply stop obscuring what was always there, even during the storm. We don't teach anything here because there is nothing to teach. A teacher implies someone who has something that you lack. But how can anyone give you what you already are? If someone claims to be "enlightened" while you are not, they are still caught in the dream of separation. They are saying, "I have reached the destination, and you are still on the path." But there is no destination, and there is no path. There is only this. This open, aware, and already complete presence. If your body-mind feels a pull toward the quiet of the morning, then sit. Not to become a better person, and certainly not to reach a goal, but because sitting is what is happening. Let the one who is always waiting for the next moment, the one who is always expecting a result, just move to the side for a while. Let things happen spontaneously. When we truly look for the seeker, we find that the seeker is just another thought, another wave in the ocean. And a wave doesn't need to practice to become the ocean. It already is the ocean, whether it is crashing violently or resting in stillness. So, we sit together in the silence, not as students or masters, but as friends who have seen through the game of seeking. We don't need the new age music or the guided instructions because those are just more "translations." We want the original. We want the stillness that is there before the first thought of the day. And if the mind remains busy and the silence feels far away, even that is it. The absolute is not a state of mind; it is that which is aware of all states of mind. It is the dreamer who remains untouched by the sickness or health of the character in the dream. You are the dreamer, the dream, and the bed all at once. Where could you possibly go to find yourself?