Many of you, especially if you're from this area, know about stinging nettles.

And we have an amazing batch of them right near us by the river that I am really careful

not to touch against because if you happen to glide against a stinging nettle, it stings,

really hurt.

I was walking with a dear friend, Janie Zitlow, who was a visiting and Jonathan this summer.

And Janie said, ah, stinging nettles, I love them.

And she described how she makes tea from them.

But she also described how if you get stung by them and you have a glove and you hold

on to the stem and you slice it open, the juice from the stinging nettle is the perfect

antidote to the burn and sting and rash that the needles cause.

You might anticipate the dharma teaching in this.

Rumi says that the cure for the pain is in the pain.

So what I'd like to explore tonight is how that's true with fear, that when we bring

presence to fear, that we find within the fear itself the very juice that frees us.

And the background to this is that if you look at any emotion that plagues you, let's

say it's depression or let's say it's shame or let's say it's an addictive behavior

or whatever is going on and if you unlayer it, what you'll find underneath is fear.

Is the anticipation of future pain.

So fear is very much at the root of all of our experience.

Now just to say that if you don't have fear, that means your brain dead, okay, really.

Fear has been described as nature's protector and it's absolutely essential for us to be

able to have our nervous system rigged in a way that we know what to do and what not to

...