Jaymee Carpenter returns to Mindrolling for an expansive talk with Raghu on addiction, luminous darkness, and loving the mystery in it all.
“I just realized at a certain point that everything I love came from the unknown. Everything. Nothing was known, it all came from the unknown. My mother, my father, this great earth, it all came from a place that we don’t know and it’s going back to a place that we don’t know. And maybe the place that we don’t know is here right now and it’s actually here and caring for us and has been all along, just giving us the opportunity to live in it, just to be alive. The unknown is where everything comes from, it’s like our true nationality.” – Jaymee Carpenter
In this episode of Mindrolling, Jaymee Carpenter and Raghu Markus explore:
- Jaymee’s work with addiction counseling
- Adding to our own suffering / the second arrow in Buddhism
- How Jaymee’s struggles with addiction have become doorways to connect with people
- Hanuman, Christ, and love of the divine
- The high of being on a retreat
- Finding light within the darkness
- Sweat lodge ceremonies and being reborn
- Being beyond identity when dealing with addiction
- Raghu’s experience with the charnel ground in India
- Getting comfortable with the unknown
- Mother energy and unconditional caring
- All of the possibilities included in the mystery
- Relationships and being secure in love
- Navigating through our traumas
“All of my drudgery and all of the things that formerly hurt are now doorways to connect with people. My Tibetan Buddhist study and practice and immersion, I’m a sucker for the dharma because it has done me so well.” – Jaymee Carpenter
About Jaymee Carpenter:
Jaymee Carpenter is a highly revered spiritual teacher and psychospiritual counselor based in Ojai, CA, with a background of 13 years of multi-faceted professional experience in the field of addiction and mental health treatment.
Homeless and addicted on Los Angeles’s Skid Row district at the age of 26, Jaymee was gifted an opportunity in 2003 to enter state-funded addiction treatment and utilized the time to reassess and repurpose himself for the benefit of humanity. The result is a man who has since risen from the ashes of his former ignorance into a life and career of unique service, while simultaneously and ceaselessly engaging in comprehensive spiritual exploration.
He is a 16-year meditation practitioner and teacher within the oldest lineage of Tibetan Buddhism (Nyingma), which is his primary source of his own recovery and mental clarity. Jaymee spent 3 years recently as an apprentice to a Lakota shaman, co-facilitating sweat lodge ceremonies for hundreds of participants on sacred land blessed by His Holiness The Dalai Lama. He is additionally a master-level communicator and storyteller, and one of the world’s great listeners.