You ask why "I" stopped meditating and started practicing actualism back when. There is a post, "my" first post here, under another handle "S Kyle" that answers this question [[BEONOTE: Available
here]]. "I" was also skeptical of actualism when I first encountered it. Then "I" listened to Dan and Tarin's Hurricane Ranch discussion [[BEONOTE: Available
here]]. At some point in there "I" also had a PCE (I cannot now remember if the PCE was before or after "I" listened to the Hurricane Rance discussion). If you haven't listened to it, I suggest maybe doing so.
A month or so before "I" found the DhO, and Daniel's book, "I'd" completed a 10-day Vipassana course (my fourth). "I'd" had some fairly significant experiences and insight there and returned home quite changed. Yet despite a tremendous decrease in suffering, there was still some undercurrent there, something left undone. "I" was fortunate enough to have time and space and freedom to spend many hours in meditation. If you have ever sat a Goenka course, you will know that much is not explained there in terms of jhanas and other states one might experience if one meditates a lot; "I" ended up looking around to be able to understand some of what "I" was experiencing. This is how "I" found Daniel's book and the DhO.
Then, "I" read the threads on actualism, read (some of) the site, and listened to the previously mentioned discussion. When "I" decided to practice actualism it wasn't out of a rejection of Buddhism per se. It was an open, speculative, adventurous endeavor. "I" had a PCE, so "I" kept cultivating them. So this is how "I" came to it. At first, "I" tried to keep up with my twice or thrice daily sits; but soon, as the PCE became a more common feature of the day, the mechanism for moving awareness through the body was often in abeyance (as I was in a PCE most of the time), so meditation didn't happen in the way "I" had previously understood it. So "I" stopped meditating.
If you could experience a PCE, then you could compare it to your usual experience and make a determination about whether or not actualism might be something you'd want to pursue and from there undertake a thorough engagement and examination of it. During the time that "I" was skeptical about actualism, "I" just thought "I'll try this PCE thing and if it doesn't work out, go right back to the cushion." But the PCE thing worked out really well.