Door No. 3
(Dazzling
Purple Butterflies)
We are aware of folks who ignore with consummate skill.
It's as if life has presented them with perfect, self-contained tidbits
for their ultimate breakthroughs.
It's Door No. 3, the penultimate doorway through which, were they only
to travel, they'd reemerge at destinations so magnificent, that their
entire world would recapture its purity and joy. 
What does it take to venture through Door No. 3? It's to instantly
transport as some dew-dropped, deep-hued, delicious inviting purple
shimmer of a calypso-pulsating butterfly sashaying through lime-green
tinged clouds, instead of this butt-ugly, grub-seeking, over mindful
earthworm they're used to every day.
Look at that ... whoever thought that worm could become a butterfly?
...Go through this doorway, and no one will recognize you from the
pathetic, habit-ridden slouch-meister most of us recognize you to be!
You'll become even more exquisite than this purple butterfly dancing in
the lime-green sky. You must have moved from Bakersfield to Aromas.
You'll be even more assimilated than that hairy, unkempt whiskered
caterpillar oozing slime as you crawl along, chewing another
aphid-riddled leaf of your dutiful day. Chomp chomp chomp. What joy to
be alive!
Oh NO, our potential purple heroine replies, I'm SO much more
comfortable amongst my fellow unfulfilled larvae, appearing to
actualize into my potential glory, yet never arriving! Besides, if I
give up my identity among my larvae clan, as ugly, angry, bitter,
self-indulgent bugs, I'll have to buy ALL NEW CLOTHES.
For yourself, it's a no-brainer. You recently returned from an
all-expense paid vacation through Door No. 3, located a frog's hair and
a Bermuda Triangle seven degrees beyond a mobius strip and an
ochre-spotted rabbit's hole just past Nassau...
...And you're aware, as only someone who has stepped across the
threshold can be, that being bitter is literally a belittling
befuddling of the potency of Creation.
In the tantalizing all-encompassing flavors of eternity, God has no
need to be bitter. If only you could convey what it means to move
through into the sweet, without the quicksand attachment of ingrained
resentment!
Grub, how about this? Door
No. 4 is also available. Do you like?
Buzz off! Leave me alone in my burrow of sorrow, our earthbound protagonist
responds.
You find it unbelievable that you're in the same yearbook as these grubs.
You're tempted to grab your former classmates by their antennae and hurl them
through Door No. 3, where, kicking-and-screaming their thousands of prickly
centipede feet along the way, they'll transform into serenity and beauty in
an instant wrinkled suture of time.
Your former classmates respond: Don't dictate to us your "high brow aesthetics
for purple butterflies"! What nerve.
You're keenly sensitive to the fact that life is a portal pretending to be
a riddle, and that Door No. 3 is a fulcrum posing
as a reframing of possibilities, and yet, it's also as simple as a teeter-totter
to catapult even the most sulk-ridden stubbornness into a smile.
Oh, a smile, says our dirty little larva protagonists .... What a cliché.
Groan.
Yes, there's not that much difference between a snarl and a smile - - both
show teeth, both demonstrate abundant attitude contained in the curling of
your lip.
And then you try to express that hurling as a fulcrum through Door
No. 3 is a healing of most of any grub's self-effacing wounds, integrating
the leakage between the present and the past, but you BELIEVE - - you simply
know - - as a premature metaphysical interventionist, that it can do no good.
You can lead an expatriate to Door No. 3, but ultimately she will drink only
from her own reservoir of Gatorade.
You still give it one last college try.
Okay, even suffering has become cliché. But my dear - - after all -
- who likes the drudgery of shopping for all new clothes resultant from your
sparkling new consciousness if you could venture through Door No. 3? And,
being the miserable grub that you are, why not simply give it a try? Your
wardrobe has to do with your placement in belonging. God knows those
rags are looking worn on your centipede feet.
I don't know .... Bug off! It's true I may represent misery as a lowly grub.
Yet I express my misery in a thorough, very dedicated way. I've researched
my misery. I've LIVED it. I've become it. Why would you want to take it from
me? You're a very bad angel.
Ah . . . of course. However, consider this. You can squirm through Door No.
3, grub face, and if you don't immediately adore your identity as one gorgeous
luminous purple butterfly, I'm confident that Homeland Security will allow
you to return to the dank-ridden, wormy place which you're most accustomed
to. And interest rates are low, low, low for your home-sweet-hole!
Damn you, why don't you angels leave us grubs alone?
Because God has sent us here. Your perpetual misery is guaranteed - - it will
not be denied to you, should your transition become an unhappy one. But there
is an option.
And that is - - ?
Door No. 3.
For one brief moment, there's a split hesitation, a splinter of hope, a thorn
of awakening, a laser-like glimmer of blinding promise.
Leave me alone, angel. By believing in me, you ask too much of me. Should
I transform by going through your door, none of my old wormy friends will
want to crawl with me anymore. Even the most lowly larva desires recognition
from his own kind.
This is all to the good.
I'll miss them so!
Really? There's so much misery where you currently dwell, you'll hardly be
missed. Plus, a bonus of the threshold. Your fellow larvae can also venture
through Door No. 3 when they're ready, buoyed by your courageous example.
For a limited time, we're also offering Door No. 4!
A shaft of light appears, highlighting the entryway. It does look luscious
and divine. Heavenly music rings entreatingly, with wispy cinnamon swirls
of sound curling around the edges.
I can't - - I just can't. We'll have to get additional zip codes of belonging.
We'll all need to acquire reissued and reprinted identity passes.
For a moment, the angel begins to lose patience. Look here, my little grubby
low life.
Picture - - in this flash of insight - - how you might feel when you surrender
your clingy attachment to what you might so easily ignore.
I'm not following you. My ignorance is my personal form of numbing bliss.
You're asking too much of a feckless hole-loving worm like me.
Get a grip, groveling grub! Imagine ignoring those energy-draining distractions,
those bloodsucking wastes of your time, with the same diffident ease with
which many of your snooty "friends" totally ignore you.
Yes, I hate them! They're all moving to Patagonia to establish emu-breeding
farms.
Of course, little one. They don't even bother to answer your calls or respond
to your emails. Because they KNOW you're a worm, a lower-class larva...
...They sense that you are merely a fluid-oozing caterpillar. And to them,
you haven't even BOTHERED to enrich your fashion education in order to be
exfoliated. Dry, dead skin - - the ultimate sin!
Hello? I'm a worm. You're cruel to tempt me. We may indeed only be worms,
with flaky, dry skin, yet we bring each other comfort - - I simply cannot
accept your offer to be uplifted through Door No. 3.
Don't you see, little one? When you release your identity with all which holds
you back, you enter into a completely revitalized geography of self.
Leave my inner zip code out of this. Leave me alone in my mini-dung-la-la!
...And you will simultaneously enter into a Far Country unlike any of the
emotional slums and debris-ridden neighborhoods you identity as your ding-dungy,
la-la home, the angel emphasized. It's God's promise for you.
It's my home. Quit trying to help me cross over to a lighter geographical
place when I'm not ready.
Are you that enchanted with being a worm?
Of course not. It's a living. And, though I hate it, and utilize LACK to hold
back everything great to which I might become, were I to surrender limitation,
I'd have nothing left to complain about! Besides, what would the therapists
and priests do with their extra time?
I was once a worm, admitted the angel.
You mock me. You see, as a larva, were I to give up my misery, my anger, and
my alienation, what then will I have? Without pain, what can I truly
call my own?
My dear, pathetic bug, I promise - - observing you as I have - - you will
still have plenty to gripe about. Moaning and groaning weren't deconstructed
in a day. Your bug nature is your cathexis which only Door No. 3 can help
you to remove. Let me assist you there now.
The grub turned his back on the angel.
And so the emissary flew away. And the grub noticed, that as the angel merged
into its shiny silver and golden shaft of light, becoming ever more distant,
that she looked like a mosquito.
