What defines these as separate entities, awareness, being, and consciousness?

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Dawa Ozer is on to something. There really isn’t anything more to the words than their dictionary definitions. If you want there to be, you have to come up with more specific terminology yourself. So when I give you my own terminology, you can’t just also ignore the other ways in which people use the words.

That said, let’s get started.

I consider being to be the penultimate concept unifying all the other ways in which we exist. We are beings that exist. I have an eight-layer hierarchy of modes of existence, that consciousness is at the very top of. Two levels underneath consciousness is awareness.

The best way to explain awareness is to show how the level above and below it interact with each other. Immediately underneath awareness is perception. Immediately above is responsiveness. Perception concerns discrete forms. You perceive a computer keyboard, and monitor and desk. You’re aware that these things together form a workstation.

Awareness is smooth and continuous. You perceive boundaries between concepts, you’re aware that the boundary makes them different things.

Ok, lets move up a level to responsiveness. You respond to the things you’re aware of. When you become aware that you’re hungry, you respond by putting a plan into action to get something to eat.

The mind deals with a ton of things all at once, you’re constantly responding to the things that come to awareness. This is what I call consciousness. When you are conscious of hunger, you perceive the sensations, are aware that it’s hunger, and can respond by getting something to eat. Any failure to do any of these things means you’re not conscious of your hunger. Note that you can also respond to hunger by just dealing with it. Choosing not to respond is still responding. The point is that you have a choice.

All of this together, along with the other four parts not discussed in this answer, forms your being.

You can find a discussion of the other parts in my blog. That links to a basic description, you can find more in subsequent posts.