tarin greco:
in the later parts of equanimity stage, the integration of physical and mental phenomena (as causal occurrences happening on their own) near completion, the sense of which is of being lost in a very quiet daydream or of slowly falling asleep.. the quality of fabricating (via exertion) is completely absent. if you've ever been the last one to leave an empty office where, having stayed late into the evening to finish, you now find yourself in the quiet of closing up and shutting off the lights, appreciating the serenity and stillness of the once-familiar environs, you will know what i mean.. leaving the building is a matter of due course, and so there is no push, no hurry, to do so, as the drift through the motions carries a sense of the ordinary, with no extraneous awareness of its extraordinary nature (as there is, from that perspective, neither anything extraordinary nor any awareness extraneous).
high equanimity is a diy sort of territory, and so advice here is of limited value. that said, having a subtle or background awareness of any of the three characteristics may be helpful. and don't forget that awareness, just like anything else, can also be noted ('let go of').
Tarin, this is all quite beautifully put.
This arriving at a place of non-fashioning can be described in different ways. One of the ways that it unfolds for me is that the fixation with thoughts and the thinking process ("fabricating via exertion" as you said) seems to drop. What's left, albeit temporarily, is the perception of being the container of experience. Thoughts, including the usual sense of "I", appear within this perceived space of knowing. Thinking becomes disorganized, as without the intention to be directed they just sort of sputter about. From here, just paying attention to the perception of my being some kind of container of experience is enough for it to either dissolve or pop. Recognizing it as a perception, and not as some fundamental reality, is key.
In terms of the five khandas, high equanimity is the culmination of having shed attachments to form, feeling, mental formations, and the perceptions of any of those things being I, Me, or Mine. What can remain (for me, anyway) is the perception that consciousness is I, Me, or Mine. When one comprehends that this too is merely a perception, the clinging mechanism* ceases to function. The resulting experience of the way things are as such is ineffable.
I don't know for sure if any of that relates to what you were saying, but I think it does.
Jackson
*I realize using a term like "mechanism" can seem like a bad match for phenomenological descriptions, as it sounds a bit Newtonian. I hope the message is received as intended, in spite of my use of a term that is so blatantly anachronistic.