How do I do a read from the M1 file without having to do a write at the same time??

If you want to read the values in the M1 file, without doing a write, you would use the command word with bits 14 & 15 set to 11, and bits 8 - 13 set to a 0 (no length), and bits 0 - 7 set for the offset (word) location to start the read.  Since the length is set to zero, you will not write any values to the M0 file, but the module will still return the data in the corresponding words in the M1 file.