When I speak, I speak to you, and I also speak for you. I say what you would say if you only knew to say it. When you read My words, and they speak to you, know that they are yours and could have originated from you had you only dared to escape the littleness of yourself and realize them. When My words speak truth to you and you hear, know that it is already your truth that you hear, or you would not hear it.

Truth exists within you, and you match it up to My words. We could say that your vibration is rising to Mine. But that vibration is already contained within you. A vibration cannot rise higher than the range of notes it already possesses.

When you look at a work of great art, it touches something that is already within you. If it were not already within you, you wouldn't be touched. The painting enters you, or you enter it. It comes closer to you, and you go closer to it. Your eyes and heart meet the eyes and heart of the painting and its artist, so to speak.

The same with great music — it awakens the music already within you. It strikes a chord. The chord is not something outside yourself. You do not have to compose the great music when you bring it and its original composer to life when you hear it.

Just so My words. They strum the chords that already exist within you. They reawaken you to yourself. And yet there are layers within you not yet strummed.

It is not that you must appreciate art and music and My words. Appreciation is not an accomplishment but a recognition, which is the same as appreciation. It is a treasure within you. And the time will come when you awake to all that is already singing in your heart.

How can you recognize something unless you have known it before? How can you recognize that which is new to you? You recognize it because it is not new to you. You have always known it. You let it be forgotten, or, perhaps you preferred not to bare it to the light and so you buried it deeper. Perhaps you thought you were not worthy, or you feared someone would take the splendor away from you if you let it be seen or you feared the world would deny you its worth or that it would be trampled upon. You might prefer to turn away from it yourself so no one else could.

Everything I tell you — you have always known. Buried beneath the coral-reefed barriers within you lies all the knowledge of creation. Art and music and everything beautiful merely portray layers of the beautiful knowledge that is already yours. Beauty stirs the responding beauty within you.

You could not know magnificence unless you were magnificence itself.

What is intelligence but recognition of itself?

What is love but love responding?

Everything responds to itself. It can respond to nothing else.

I cast My words upon the waters, and you catch them. You are like beautiful rainbow trout who swim in My words. You leap and dive in and out of My words. And you leap again. You carry them with you. You keep some of My words in your mouth and some deep in your heart. But My words were never Mine apart from you in the first place. My words are not apart from you. They are yours. Do My words capture you, or have you captured them? When are you not held and beheld in My words?

You swim in My words. Like fish in the ocean, you are immersed in My words. And what are My words but expressions of My thoughts, and what are My thoughts but expressions of love for you?