Television vs. New Vision (pt.1)
I’ve always been convinced that what I watch on tv gets imprinted in my mind. The number of times I’ve fallen asleep during a movie or right after one usually leads me to dreaming about the characters or similar type scenes & events.
The funniest one was probably when I fell asleep watching a Wimbledon tennis match. I was in South Korea and it was the middle of the night. As I was falling asleep, my eyes were glued to the tv and believe it or not, I experienced being a tennis ball. I never knew you could be an inanimate object in your dreams but here I was being hit by the racket & swinging in the air from one end of the court to the other.
What was funny was that I didn’t realise I was a ball at first. As I was flying in the air, I could see the crowd in the stadium and I was surprised. Even though it was ages ago I still remember thinking “this is weird, how am I so high up in the air?” Until suddenly… swoosh, the racket hit me and I literally flew back to the other side. It happened a few times until I got a really bad headache & woke up. I was left perplexed “Did I just dream I was a tennis ball?” I couldn’t believe that could happen but it did and since then I’ve always been quite attentive to what happens in my dreams when I go to sleep right after watching tv.
As some of you know by my instagram stories, I decided to start watching Gilmore girls for the first time ever during quarantine. I obviously got so hooked on it. Who wouldn’t? I could easily watch 3-4 episodes in one sitting. If you know anything about Gilmore girls, you know that Lorelai and Rory absolutely love to eat. And they don’t just eat a little. They order Chinese food & pizza in one evening. They follow that up by eating doughnuts and cupcakes. Don’t even get me started on Sooki. Her food looks incredible and delicious & I know it’s just a tv show but it all looks very very real.
What I began to notice was that my eating & sleeping habits shifted the more I watched the show. I’m not one to binge eat or crave chocolates or cakes at 9pm in the evening. I never went to sleep past midnight and here I was at 2 am still watching Netflix. This increase in cravings and sleepless nights got me wondering if GG actually influenced my patterns?
I started to bake more. More cakes, more cookies & brownies just so that when I would watch GG I could eat when they ate. It made me feel better weirdly. Like I was a part of their crew and part of the show. I did not feel like I was missing out on the fun because here I was on my couch eating chocolate chip cookies while they ate their burgers &/or pop tarts. Jokes aside though, I actually had a few people reach out to me to tell me they felt the same way. They took up drinking coffee again due to the high amounts of caffeine these two women drank.
Now thankfully GG is a pretty chill show where I’m not left thinking about robbing a bank, or getting away with murder. However, here’s the thing, the things we watch don’t only disturb us in dreams, they impact our whole lives.
You may or may not realise this yet, but what you consume daily is being engraved in your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind makes up 95% of your brain power. That only leaves 5% to your conscious mind. Can you actually let that sit in? 5% of what you do or think about is CONSCIOUS. The 95% of it is pretty much automatic. 95% of your mind is dictating your life. 95% of your mind is now not only made up of your real-life memories, or your skills, beliefs & experiences but now includes a whole set of recordings you’ve watched on tv or on your phone screens.
Now some of you may think I’m being dramatic like this is only a show and I should grab a hold of myself. Personally, I would not normally make a big deal out of this but what really started to trip me up was when I would meditate and suddenly a scene from Gilmore Girls would appear. This has happened 3 times already. The vision is crystal clear & I don’t know how else to explain it except it’s like I photocopied the scene in my mind & it’s playing the way I saw it.
These scenes are not superficially sitting in my mind. In fact, they are quite deeply rooted in my subconscious. I know this to be true because these scenes don’t appear right away. It’s not like I think about these things all day long and they most definitely don’t come to my mind immediately. These meditative states I get in are deep states. They’re after I spent a good 15-20 mins meditating. These scenes appear right before I completely zone out. These scenes changed my eating and sleeping habits.
This realization scared me a little. Not because they’re scary scenes but because it really hit me how deeply buried our programming is. What we watch, what we consume daily is ALWAYS being registered at the back of your mind. You may or may not think that this is a big deal but it is. It is because we are glued to all types of screens.
From TikTok to Instagram to Facebook to twitter, millions of photos/videos are being uploaded daily of everything & anything. Our brain is like a sponge & we are very easily influenceable.
We are easily influenceable because for the 45 mins or so of me watching Lorelai & Luke break up and get back together again for the millionth time my senses are stimulated. My eyes are on the screen, my ears are tuned into what they are saying, my taste buds are stimulated because I’m eating my cookie, and I’m emotionally involved in their relationship. I’ve seen their relationship blossom and fall apart & I’m connected to these characters. I’m transported. I would think that’s why most of us watch tv. To be transported to another world. To relax our minds a little. To unwind. To not have to think about anything work or life related. To escape.
& I really see how this can be a big issue for us if we are over consuming media. Because if a tv show like GG can end up in my subconscious mind, I wonder what else is in there. I wonder what else was passively passed on to me without my awareness, without my consent? It is scary to think about because this means we are not thinking for ourselves anymore & if you were to observe your thoughts for 10 mins in silence, without distractions, you would know that to be true. You would know that the voices you hear in your mind are not really yours. You would realise that some of the stories you tell yourself are not based on actual experiences but your own interpretation of what is real and what is not. If we are all programmed by what we’ve consumed and are consuming, we would have lost all our originality.