Rating: 
Summary: The Wild Within is waiting for you.
Review: Most of us lead hurried, demanding lives, cut off from the natural world that surrounds us. The Wild Within walks us back into this natural world, into the sights, sounds, and smells of the wild. Paul Rezendes guides us gently by sharing his own personal trials, revelations and experiences. But, this is more than a book about the outdoors! From his intimidate encounters with wild animals, Paul Rezendes turns to himself and to all of us and examines who we are in the greater scheme of life. Some people may not be ready to let go of their ideas of self, preconceived notions, the control of thought, of ego and fear in order to step into the wild and the wild within, but for those who are ready, the "wild within" is waiting.
Rating: 
Summary: Delightful and sometimes questing
Review: Paul Rezendes's book "The Wild Within" is a wonderful book, easy to read and sometimes as casual as a hot summer's day and at others intense and deep with illuminating experiences of the searcher for truth, no matter how contradictory this sounds. His life, that of a man trying to find a way to reality if you like when it was always there all the time just waiting to be noticed once the chattering mind has been silenced, is fascinating. His years as leader of a motorcycle gang and then his route to the opposite extreme that of a yoga and ashram founder show how much suffering someone must sometimes go through to reach that impossible peak where you are already standing. Rezendes's book takes turns wandering in different directions, often through a factual journey of animal tracks and behaviour patterns and then to his own experiences with them as he is tracking them and finally to his own very deeply personal experiences in trying to live life as a human being, in the end, must. It is remarkable how the intensity of the book varies throughout, the animal connections are really amazing, such as his direct communication with the Moose and the almost scary reply of the fox to his own infringements on its territory. If you're looking for a strictly tracking book, don't read this, if its more you want, maybe. Delightful and sometimes questing.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book
Review: Rezendes is an extraordinarily lucid and insightful writer. This loosely connected collection of essays is linked together by his own experiences: in the woods, tracking and stalking and learning about animals; in his past as a gang leader of two prominent motorcycle gangs, and later as a teacher in an ashram. The words flow quite accessibly and to the point, yet resonate with profundity.
Rating:
Summary: Stalking As Connection
Review: There are many ways to connect with spirit. Paul Rezendes tells how tracking animals can be a spiritual meditation. In the still of nature, the tracker must pay attention to every sign, every cue of the animal's tracks to succeed in knowing the animal in its fullness. As you stalk, you see, hear and feel what is normally hidden by the mind's chatter or the distractions of time. You are in the Now. The reward for such concentration is to know the unique beauty of the animal you follow. And in this knowing, you bring into yourself the wildness of nature that is always part of you. Through stalking meditation, Paul Rezendes shows that the wildness of the loon is love. The wildness of the moose is sharing. Bears teach appropriate fear. All nature teaches connection. Rezendes inspires you to seek wildness. Go for it! It comes to you.
Rating:
Summary: Wild Within
Review: This book is not just about experience or wilderness, it is not only about life or enlightening, it is all of this at once... Like understanding how your footsteps relate to the sky. First you look down to the ground, not just close, closer, not just staring but embracing. Only then do you start elevating, not high but broad, not yourself but all. This book is a testimony that when you want to go down a path, your starting point has no influence on how far you can go. Distance is of no object though; depth is what you are looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Wild Within
Review: This book is not just about experience or wilderness, it is not only about life or enlightening, it is all of this at once... Like understanding how your footsteps relate to the sky. First you look down to the ground, not just close, closer, not just staring but embracing. Only then do you start elevating, not high but broad, not yourself but all. This book is a testimony that when you want to go down a path, your starting point has no influence on how far you can go. Distance is of no object though; depth is what you are looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Spiritual journey in the wild
Review: This is a book which requires that one actually read the dust jacket description. From the cover and the title, a reader might think this is a book about tracking skills. It is. However, the animal that Rezendes teaches his students to track is ultimately themselves. The other reviews here already outline Rezendes' personal history, which he often uses as example in his teachings. His approach to self discovery is one I'd not encountered before, however. Yes, I know many seek quiet in the woods to get in touch with their own spirit, but this notion of tracking and stalking another animal to achieve this end is fascinating to me. Fascinating also are the connections he makes from seemingly unrelated incidents such as a bobcat's journey and that of spiritual seekers. He gives us simple exercises we can try in our own "wilderness" to help us experience the ideas he suggests. His ability to read the signs left by the animals amazed me, and I have been one to look at such things carefully in my own forays into the wild. This book shows that there is so much I haven't seen, both in tracking wild creatures and my own journey through life. Whether you agree with his approach or not, this is a highly readable and thought-provoking book, a refreshing change from most of the "self help" genre.
Rating:
Summary: Spiritual journey in the wild
Review: This is a book which requires that one actually read the dust jacket description. From the cover and the title, a reader might think this is a book about tracking skills. It is. However, the animal that Rezendes teaches his students to track is ultimately themselves. The other reviews here already outline Rezendes' personal history, which he often uses as example in his teachings. His approach to self discovery is one I'd not encountered before, however. Yes, I know many seek quiet in the woods to get in touch with their own spirit, but this notion of tracking and stalking another animal to achieve this end is fascinating to me. Fascinating also are the connections he makes from seemingly unrelated incidents such as a bobcat's journey and that of spiritual seekers. He gives us simple exercises we can try in our own "wilderness" to help us experience the ideas he suggests. His ability to read the signs left by the animals amazed me, and I have been one to look at such things carefully in my own forays into the wild. This book shows that there is so much I haven't seen, both in tracking wild creatures and my own journey through life. Whether you agree with his approach or not, this is a highly readable and thought-provoking book, a refreshing change from most of the "self help" genre.
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