Through The Mask

I used to think I knew who I was.

A car salesman in London in the 1980s. A man who knew how to charm people, bend the rules and get away with it. During those early years, I found myself taking from the companies I worked for — nothing significant, nothing they'd ever notice. I just liked getting away with something. But what took place at the final dealership changed me in ways I hadn't expected. I discovered what it felt like to step outside the life I was supposed to be living.

From a police cell in London to a kibbutz in Israel, from an ashram in India to a life lived in a van in Cornwall. Along the way came psychedelic experiences, extraordinary encounters, and moments of profound connection.

Slowly, I began to see a pattern. The crimes, the relationships, the escapes, the coincidences and the experiences I'd never been able to explain all seemed connected. I started to wonder whether the things I'd spent my life trying to avoid were actually leading me where I needed to go.

But then I saw a problem.

What if letting go was just another form of running away? What if the people I thought were there for a reason were simply other people? What if I'd just been calling my desires spiritual?

The more I looked, the harder it became to know what was true.

This is the story of my attempt to discover what remains when the identities, beliefs, relationships and stories I'd used to define myself fall away.

Through the mask is an unflinching memoir of crime, freedom, love, fatherhood and the uneasy search for truth — and what happens when the person I thought I was turns out not to have been me.