When Oh When?

 If the ego is a maladaptive solution to a non-existing problem (one of my favorite expressions from Ken Wapnick - see him here on Self-sabotage), then the game of expectations is a beautiful variant of how the ego's slight of hand works. It really works like a bad management consultant who first charges you money to steal your information, and then turns around and sells you their solution to a problem you never had. Logion 51 is all about that. It is yet another way that Jesus points out in the poignant praphrasings of the Thomas Gospel how the Kingdom is not elsewhere, but it is right here, except we don't see it.There are numerous ways that this theme comes up in the Thomas Gospel, and it has interesting parallels in the Course. Logion 3 is another powerful expression of the same idea. The whole point is that the Kingdom is within, and it is only our choice for the ego that shuts us out, conversely it is our choice for the Holy Spirit or Jesus, by which we become chosen, simply because we'll remember that we always were. We set up the problem we are trying to solve, and the harder we try to solve it, the more we'll have it. Here is one way this is addressed in the Course:

The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream. (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10)

So, we are the ones who chose the separation, which is why we don't "see the Kingdom," for the attack we see, is a mere reflection of our own self-attack in choosing the separation, which never happened in the first place. Just like with banging your head against the wall - it feels so good when you stop - as soon as we stop choosing the separation, our eyes will open to the reality of what the Course calls "the real world." Finally the Course also says this:

The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself. (ACIM:T-8.VI.9:6-11)

"It is a journey without distance, to a goal that has never changed," the Kingdom is all around you, except you don't see it. Instead, what we do is re-enacting the separation constantly, and reinforcing the ego's presumed "sin" because we want to keep the ego alive, because we are thinking in our deluded state that we are our ego. Again, here is how the Course describes the psychological dynamic of how we keep the ego alive, and ourselves in hell:

    It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. (ACIM:T-4.II.1:1-3)

So the undoing of the question is in stopping with banging your head against the wall, or in this case stopping with empowering your ego, by voting HS instead, and the subtlety which the Course teaches is that the Holy Spirit does not appear on the ballot in this world, and we choose Him by not voting EGO. That's as simple as it gets. Simple, if not always easy. Jesus does believe in truth in advertising, but at times he does take poetic license with us, but always with the ultimate goal of getting us to smile at our own silliness. The Course again:

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long? (ACIM:W-pII.4.5)