> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.foxwizard.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Out of the dark forest
- URL: https://www.foxwizard.com/now-out-of-the-dark/
- Published: 2024-12-17T03:35:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-10T12:47:28.000Z
- Author: Dr. Jason Fox
- Tags: now

It’s been at least five years of questing in the dark forest; a protracted [cocoon](https://www.animas.org/glossary-to-language-of-soul-canyon/?ref=foxwizard.com#Cocoon) chapter of dissolution and descent. I didn’t choose to do this—not at first. But familial and ecological grief coupled with the metacrisis ‘insight-cascade’ finally caught up with me. 

I had intellectually processed this—or so I thought. But this merely suppressed the sorrow, and all the feels. Plus the blursed question from my book [*How to Lead a Quest*](https://www.foxwizard.com/books/#how-to-lead-a-quest)*—*namely: *“is this meaningful progress? or are we perpetuating a rich delusion of progress?”*—has had me realise that much of our shared trajectory is a [delusion of progress](https://www.foxwizard.com/authentic-progress/). A default that will lead us to mutually assured destruction (or at the very least: a future quite grim). And so I stepped through the [window of disenchantment](https://www.foxwizard.com/e2/), venturing [beyond hope](https://www.foxwizard.com/beyond-hope/), and opening myself to poetry, myth, magic, and more. 

And it worked! Eventually. 

I would not wish this on anyone (or would I?), but I can’t help but feel that the past half-decade was absolutely *necessary*. 

And so now I am wending my way back towards myself.