My present theory is that dreaming is an active, tho unconscious, deed. So step 1 is to make the unconscious, conscious. And then step 2 is to stop dreaming.
More mundane examples : Turn off the movie. Quit the game. Close the book. Alarm clock goes off.
But that’s just me. I want to hear your opinions on this subject.
Depends on if it’s lucid or not. When lucid, I just decide to wake up. It’s kind of like forcing myself to open my eyes. It’s hard to explain.
I don’t have any matrix-esque answer the phone type of process.
I mean dream in the most general sense. Be it a “dream at night” type dream or a fiction-induced dream (movie, book, videogame).
Any time you are entering a body of assumptions about reality, I guess. Or an “artificial way of seeing”. How do you exit that?
The meditation answer (that I alluded to there in the text) is to carefully watch your world and yourself and catch yourself “choosing to dream”, then stop doing that. (which is easy enough with movies, more difficult in other cases, etc)