Yes, my model is “similar to the difference between a dreamer and a lucid dreamer”.
That model is also in my worldview stew. I’m quite fond of it. I image-ine myself to be a lucid dreamer who knows he is dreaming and chooses to keep dreaming. Closer to reality is probably that I am a very modestly and fleetingly lucid dreamer who is terrified to wake up. ! 
That’s confusing. Are you or aren’t you “a lucid dreamer who knows he is dreaming and chooses to keep dreaming”?
I’ve just made the claim on another thread that the whole point of all these teachings is the avoidance of harm through an understanding of who we are.
If this is true, isn’t the self (the experience of existence from this central, first person perspective - of being the central and main character of this experience) who we are? (or at least the tip of the iceberg, or the basis for our reactions)
Interesting, even when I try not to be confusing I’m confusing!
My self image is of a person who is lucidly dreaming, or as I think of it: lucidly living. The truth might be that I am fooling myself about the lucidity, i.e. I’m as in the dark as the average joe.
Do I have a self-image because all I can honestly know about myself is what I’m thinking/feeling right now and what I’m doing or attempting to do at this moment? And wouldn’t that mean always being completely here now, which no one ever seems to be doing?
Say you are right and all I can know about myself is what I’m thinking-feeling now. Why would that lead me to develop, nurture, and depend on a self-image?
That may be another thread. I’m still trying to grasp the concept of a center with no content.
Yes, the self is a story. But the functional center of the brain is not a story. It’s just one brain’s awareness and response.
Freedom from the known isn’t absence of the known, it’s absence of attachment to the known. ?
What is “the known”? Does it matter if what we presume to know is true or not? Of is the known only the content of psychological thought…what we presume to know about who/what oneself and others are?
If by the ‘known’ we mean our psychological conditioning, then surely freedom from the known is the dissolving or letting go of that conditioning?
We know we believe a lot of things that aren’t true but are accepted as common knowledge until they’re debunked, but the brain’s beliefs about itself and others are “the known” that matters most because if the brain can be dishonest and self-deceiving at this fundamental level, it can’t be honest and selfless at any level.
We are using ‘the known’ to mean the totality of our psychological conditioning.
I think the reality is closer to: The reflexes/habits of conditioning continue, to an extent, even in the ‘awakened’ mind. I.e. the trains are still running, the awakened person just doesn’t get on!
But that is merely speculation, based largely on things I learned studying Advaita. Get the salt!
If we go by Krishnamurti, it is clear that aspects of his early conditioning remained with him throughout life: the careful cleanliness, the disinclination to touch banisters, the way he annunciated English words, his curiosity about mechanical devices, a love of cars, clothes, silly jokes (he like Jeeves and Wooster growing up), etc.
But the contention is - and there is no way of course to prove it - that the core of his consciousness was empty of psychological conditioning.
In his case it was possibly even empty from childhood (he talked about himself as a young person as having a ‘vacant mind’ - meaning that he believed the core of his self-identity was empty from the very beginning).
But the point is, it is not a question of whether or not our superficial conditioning continues - but whether our core conditioning can be emptied/dissolved.
What do you mean by emptied/dissolved?
Ended. Died to.
To use a Krishnamurti phrase - with the ending of sorrow there is passion which is compassion.
It is the meeting of sorrow without any movement away from it that ends it (according to K).
Is there such a thing as a person, much less an “awakened person”?
Powerful and long-lasting psychological tendencies ending isn’t in my repertoire. Lessening in intensity, that I know. Temporarily absent, yeah. But truly ending, as in done? Not in my cards.
Questions like that engage my version of the two truths concept: Conventionally, there are persons and there are awakened persons. Ultimately, all bets are off!