I often rationalize the absurd nature of my dreams by insisting that “I must be watching television”, or a movie. If you think about it, TV has wave after wave of potential dreamsigns or dreamlike imagery rolling continuously.
I believe that without the proper awareness, watching television can reduce your chance of being lucid in the presence of dreamsigns or dreamlike images, as they would condition the brain to interpret this stimuli as “television”. My internal dialogue confirms this in my dreams.
However, with proper awareness, television could be utilized as a means to emulate dream imagery without using your imagination. Simply focus on the television images, wait for a dreamsign or dreamlike occurence to appear, and then perform an RC and visualize becoming lucid.
I have noticed that watching television does seem to reduce the degree of lucity I enjoy when dreaming – whether I have an LD or not. Ditto with movies.
Really good movies / television programs seem to break with this trend, so I have concluded this reduction in dream-clarity is at least in part a reflection of the pablum-like quality of most mass entertainment. The more actual thought or artistic merit a particular show offers, the more likely that it will stimulate rather than diminish my dream-life.
I’ve also noted the reading is more likely to be a positive influence on the quality of dreaming than television or film viewing are, and less likely to be a negative one – even when not of particularly high caliber.
I supose that this partly reflects a generally more substantive quality in book-publishing than in movie and television production. But I also suspect that this is partly because reading is an activity that inherently requires more creative participation on the part of the reader than movies or television usually require of viewers.
If the material is of sufficiently high quality, either for artistic merit or it’s ability to provoke thought, it’s all good.
I don’t feel that watching TV has a major influence on your ability to LD. But I do feel that falling asleep with the TV on can influence your dream state depending on the person and if they are able to hear things in their surroundings while asleep. Plus the whole waves thing.
For example, I sleep with the radio on at night and sometimes I am able to hear the music in my dream state. But it’s the jazz station so it’s usually something mellow that does not interfer with my dreams in a negative way.
VeeDreams, in a way that’s nice to read that you still LD even using computers much . But then your statement on a relation between computers and LD’s doesn’t play in my favor .
How do you say that it may affect the ability to have more LD’s ? It could be an idea to check people’s ratio between computer time / LD number .
Im on it the computer alot myself, Im trying not to watch to much TV, I do watch the news, and weather, but even comercial are unreal, theres alot of crazy things in comercials, that could only hapen in dreams.
The less inerference from Media the better if you want conscious control and awareness. The idea of Lucid dreaming is to awaken consciousness in the Astral not to be further mesmerized as we are when watching TV. Don’t get me wrong,Im addicted to that device of unconsciousness like a sedative to make you sleep not Awaken.
The less junk we have in our minds before going to sleep the more clear our dreams, and ability to lucid dream, will be.
I say you can watch TV but just be careful what you watch expecially before going to sleep and also don’t fall asleep in front of the TV while it is on.
I use to watch that show CSI and I stopped when I realized how it could be affecting my sleep and dreams. They put it on late at night too. Hmmm I think they know what they are doing. I also cut back on watching so much ER. But it’s hard cause I really like that show.
I just have a feeling it still has an affect on us even on a lower scale. We have more control over the computer. But we still have the occational popup ad or if you use a shared computer others may have stuff on it that you usually would not see if you were the only one using it. The computer to me is also a form of media. But it’s media you control. You know how sometimes you run across something on the computer and think why did I have to see or read that?
Oh, and I don’t watch the news anymore. If I need the weather, I get online. The news to me is the biggest fear tactic out there.
Do you just bury your head in the sand and pray it all works out?
Do you read the newspaper or just use the internet for all your news and current events?
I’m saying this because I think more people need to watch the news rather than believing it’s all just part of some giant conspiracy. Watch, learn, and form your own opinions about the world, rather than just saying “who gives a crap they’re all trying to screw us anyway.”
That was a little harsh.
Face it, American news sucks. If I lived in America, I’d watch the BBC or CBC, cause American news is more like a movie advertisment than a news program.
Yeah, exactly.
When i watch it(hardley ever, I don’t enjoy being brainwashed by the fear) I see it as a show, like it’s an episode of a sit-com.
Well, I do believe that watching TV dulls the chances of lucidity.
But of course it all matters…like I watched Waking Life everynight for a week, and had great luciditly.
currently for the past year I only watch TV as much as an hour a week, my lucidily is in no luck though.
wether we watch much TV or not, it is all about your FOCUS and WILLPower to become lucid. That’s how I see it.
Focus*!
-Six
Actually, what I’m wondering is whether watching much TV could affect dreams and in particular LD’s but my question (slightly different from the original one but directly linked to it) deals with the form and not the substance (that’s why I talked about computer screens).
Could someone who watches to any kind of screen much time / day see his ability of LD’s decreasing ? For sure, we could consider separately the computer case from the TV case as well as I’d be curious to ask about CRT case and flat screens case (for example, and if by chance there was a difference of effects…). I’d be curious about possible effects of staying long “absorbed” in a type of lightbeam, if any…
(As blinking lights can cause epileptic fits, for example…)
After reading through this thread a few times, I’ve made watching TV and surfing the internet a dreamsign.
After all, some weird stuff happens on TV and on the Intenet, and we just rationalize it as being something we see every day. I figure if I see something strange on the TV or something, and I perform a reality check, then my habits of noticing strange things will become better