Actually it’s not. Be is a verb, being is a noun, adjective or conjunction. But, bear with me…

I like distinctions and definitions. I have always been a semantics bastard, and often take side trips in arguments to dig into the minutiae of definitions for the words and terms being used. Drives some people crazy. I totally get that it can be annoying, and I hold back as much as I am able, but precision of language is now, and always has been, terminally important to me. I believe that the language we use internally is the first barrier, lens, and tool for us to both understand the world as it is, and converse about it in a meaningful way. I really enjoy when shifts in the basic definitions I have are facilitated by things people tell me, I read, or I figure out. The change in viewpoint is always liberating, if only to reaffirm that we have a lot to do with how we perceive the meaning of it all, and how we get in our own way.

I was reading Eckhart Tolle‘s book The Power of Now the other evening. It was recommended by a co-worker. (Thanks, Dan!) I came across a passage that caused a shift in my internal distinctions. In my mind, Being, with a capital B, meaning the totality of creation and all that is beyond it, had always occurred as a noun. A name for a static thing which was, and which we moved through. The quote which changed that distinction for me was -

The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infinite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as a feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being. (All italics and capitalization are original to the text.)

That paragraph caused the shift (of course including all the paragraphs and all the experiences of my life before that moment) of understanding the concept of Being as a verb, an active state and happening, rather than as a noun. I wrote earlier on my opinion about I am, and this distinction includes that, but having Being occur for me as a verb has a vast amount of more power behind it and room to work than Being as a noun. And, the only thing that changed was how the word was defined in my head.

I love distinctions!

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