Virginia Woolf recognize as one of the great innovators of Modern fiction.
Her experiments with point of view have influenced many writer that followed her, but one particular interesting technique that doesn't seem to receive much attention is her use of moment of being.
... to wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable - even if the events themselves are unimportant - that they can't be vividly record while other events are easily forgotten.
She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences: moments of being and (moments of) non being.
Virginia Woolf explicitly never defines what she means by moment of being. Instead she provides examples of these moments and contrasts them with moments of what she calls "non being".
Moments of non being appear to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of even as she experiences them.
She knows people perform routines such as walking and shopping without thinking about them. this part of the life is "not lived consciously" but instead is embedded in "a kind of not descript cotton wool" . it is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non being.

One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments.
A walk in the country can easily be hidden behind the "cotton wool" for one person but for Virginia Woolf the experience is very vivid.
Virginia Woolf asserts that this moment of being, these fleshes of awareness, reveal a pattern hidden behind the "cotton wool" of daily life, and that we "I mean all human beings - are connetted with this - that the whole world is a work of art that we are parts of the work of art" but the individual artists is not important in this world. Instead she says of all people "we are the words, we are the music, we are the thing itself".
Thus for Virginia Woolf a moment of being is a moment when an individual is fully conscious of his experience, a moment when he is not only aware of himself but catches a glimpse of his connection to a larger part hidden behind the opaque surface of daily life.
Unlike moments of non being, when the individual lives and acts without awareness, performing acts as if as sleep, the moment of being opens up a hidden reality.
Moments of being can be found throughout Virginia Woolf fiction: Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, Between The Acts.
Unlike Joyce's epiphany, these moments do not lead to decisive revelation for her characters, but they provide moments of energy and awareness that allow the character who experiences them to see life more clearly and more fully, if only briefly. And some characters try to share the vision that they glimpse, making the work of art that is life visible to others.
Mrs Dalloway presents the two characters who are most repetitive to moments of being in all of Woolf's fiction: Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith. Clarissa experiences her moments of being, while, in the middle of what appear to be trivial acts, indicating that it is not the action, but the awareness that sets a moment of being a part from other experiences. Throughout the day Clarissa is particularly aware of these threads of connection between herself and her surrounds. All of Virginia Woolf moments of being are marked by particularly vivid and powerful language.
Because these are moments of exact feelings, the language used to convey them must naturally be precise and evocative, the form and content must be in perfect symmetry. It is true that in a novel long stretches of narrative can be cloaked in mundane language: not every scene is of equal value or must carry an equal weight. But in her moments of being Virginia Woolf uses a language that approaches poetry.