[seletskiy]

I guess it is a matter of experience and practice, as with anything else, really.

There is a very subtle mental state between "I am too aware that I am dreaming" and "there is no awareness of dreaming at all". I don't really know how to put it in words, but it seems that you BOTH need to supress part of the brain that wakes you up and prevent loosing awareness at the same time. It is very apparent during "ordinary" falling asleep, when you suddenly catch yourself that you are "seeing pictures" (hypnagogia phase) and become fully awake again. The trick is continue "falling asleep" without loosing awareness. Same applies during the lucid dream. You need to maintain balance.

You basically need to continue experimenting to notice those subtle changes to know which mental state would wake you up and which would not, so you'll get more precise control.

There are other factors at play for sure, like if you will manage to get your lucid dream right after first deep phase of sleep, your body would likely be not rested enough to quickly reach wakefulness, so you'll have more time.

I don't think that lucid dreaming is easy, and it was never easy for me. It was actually pretty hard work. It was almost impossible to get lucid dream if I was already mentally exhausted during the day. As soon as I stopped to practice, lucid dreams stopped too.