That is a good question. I'm not 100% sure if I became conscious of dreaming or not. It was definitely a conscious decision within the dream when I recalled being in this same situation two times before and made a conscious decision to escape the infinite staircase. There definitely wasn't that recall in the previous staircase dreams.

Also an interesting observation about the recurrent nature of the dream and the meaning behind it and I have given it some thought. The past year has been somewhat tumultuous due to a health scare with my mum and also all the covid stuff and some job insecurity that's happened so maybe there was a level of loss of control influencing and creating the feeling of no escape within the nightmare. And the last dream I had where I had some level of recall and a conscious decision to escape and succeeding in that. It will be interesting to see if I have anymore of the same nightmare and if I was able to resolve it through conscious recall and action within the dream.

Thanks for throwing up some ideas guys!