I'm narcoleptic. Sleep paralysis happens pretty often to me and it still causes me distress almost every time until I "boot up" enough to realize what is going on.
Hypnagogic hallucinations (at least that I remember) are quite a bit rarer and much more terrifying, since my brain pretty much dreams up the worst possible scenarios possible (burning building, demons, reapers, Sasquatch, being dead in a morgue drawer, and even evil leprechauns have made appearances).
Don't forget the alien strobe lights. Sorry now you are gonna see that too.
In all seriousness, wiggle your big toe. For some reason your fine motor controls are probably still online, and it will break you out of the hypnagogic state. Kill bill wasn't lying.
But... if you wanna real trip, try to remain calm, still and breathe deeply through the hallucinations and keep in mind that nothing can hurt you (I like to repeat the mantra, "there is nothing to fear but fear itself").
You will reach a state of blissful calm. Congratulations, you just achieved a meditative state that people strive for years to reach. From there you can have out of body experiences, transcendental meditation, etc. Seriously it's some spooky business.
For some odd reason, I don't really see flashing lights or anything extraterrestrial. I don't know why.
And wiggling my toes or fingers doesn't seem to ever work for me, but my phone buzzing or someone touching me breaks me out almost instantly.
As for the calm, "astral projecting" thing, I used to do some things like that and really enjoyed it, until I ended up "seeing" some jackal-headed monstrosity battling shadow people and something that looked like smoke with diamond shaped blazing yellow eyes.
Hypnagogic hallucinations (at least that I remember) are quite a bit rarer and much more terrifying, since my brain pretty much dreams up the worst possible scenarios possible (burning building, demons, reapers, Sasquatch, being dead in a morgue drawer, and even evil leprechauns have made appearances).