Plants and animals, since they have a determinative nature, have only to actualize that nature in the course of their lives. With man, it is different, since the human is a combination of being and non-being. Though a man starts with a certain nature, his potential is much vaster. So a man is not until he creates himself. Reality is not already “out there” waiting for us to contemplate it; rather it is a reality which

waits for us to construct, a reality which is truly even now love and will, because it is the inward effort of the soul, its living process, not its ideal and external model… The world is no longer what is known but what is made and we begin to conceive the mind as freedom or moral activity… The whole world is a world which is what it should be, or a world … essentially moral ~ Giovanni Gentile

Therefore, we see that the human is necessarily creative, and true creativity involves the manifestation of quality in the world. The truly creative are more attentive to the possibilities offered.

Note: This originally was part of the notes for an open class in non-duality, given in the summer of 2005.