Just Being

   I have been hearing a lot recently about the expression "just be", which seems quite common in circles where meditation is being discussed. I am sure there must be books out there with titles such as "The Power of Being" to reinforce this notion that being is radically powerful and present with us everywhere. One of the problematic aspects of the expression "just be"  is that it contains an invisible polarity: "just be" as opposed to what? Non-being? Doing? In his book To Have or to Be, Erich Fromm refers to the diverging orientations of having and 'just being'. For Fromm, consumer culture encourages people to become passive and identified with consumable objects, whereas being is something that is accessed to everyone at all times. It makes me wonder, however, whether the modern consumer really 'doesn't have a soul' after all, and whether the two orientations are really mutually exclusive.
    Part of the problem, I think, is that it is easy to misunderstand the expression 'just be'. For many, it represents a flight from action or responsibility; as long as "I am I', I don't need to serve anyone or anything else outside 'my' being. Of course, real being is always inter-being. There is never a disembodied 'being' that is somehow cut off from the phenomena of the universe. I think a more nuanced understanding of 'just being' might be to see that everything one does, thinks, has, and sees is included as being. There isn't a thought that is alien or beyond being. All is included in being.
   When I am really knowing that this mind is inhabiting all the present moment in totality, is there anything that isn't 'to be'? At that point, even non-being starts to seem illusory, because there needs to be an awareness that is aware of non-being in order for non-being to be. Knowing this or at least sensing it, I relax my desire to somehow 'purify' my experiences by making my thoughts more clear. Instead, I am able to see that anything coming up in mind is an instance of being. And none of the thoughts stays the same from one moment to the next, so can I even see them as obstacles to being anymore?