This is something that is initially very difficult to grasp for someone coming from a spiritual background - and maybe particularly so for someone from a pragmatic dharma background. And I say this from experience 
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Meditation, in this context, is, how can I put it, a ‘sophisticated’ tool in a sense. The world is divided into “uninstructed, run-of-the-mill” people – and those who know better, those on the spiritual path, that have something special, a technology or tool above what ordinary ‘uninstructed’ people have… and these tools or teachings is what is applied.
What you’ve learned to do, via no doubt the many hours you’ve spend doing it, is how to ‘focus’ or ‘concentrate’ your attention in order to exhibit various changes in your consciousness (whether some perceive meditation as ‘not doing anything at all’ doesn’t change the fact that the clear intent is to change ‘something’ - else why do it at all?)
When you get good enough at it, as I did in the past, then you’re able to, by directing how you focus your attention, cause certain qualities to arise, qualities such as sukkha, piti, pasadhi, upekkha. Please note that, as you rightly put here, these qualities derive from jhanas, which are altered states of consciousness that arise from shutting out the world (closing eyes in a quiet environment), and can be perhaps categorized as ‘trance states’ – although that’s not to say there isn’t sharp attention of a sort during them, just that the focus in a jhana has a certain quality.
It’s not always practical to set aside the time to get into a deep jhana, so, as you’ve found, it’s possible to take those qualities derived from the jhana, and experience them in your daily life even without getting fully into the jhana.
That you are able to do this indicates you have an ability, a skill, that ordinary people simply don’t have and probably don’t even conceive of as possible… either from lack of exposure or lack of interest or lack of success.
All this is to say that, the enjoyment and appreciation of actualism literally is nothing other than the ordinary and regular enjoying and appreciating of daily life that every man, woman, and child experiences, has experienced, or will experience, on occasion, simply by the normal (i.e. “uninstructed, run-of-the-mill”) course of living out their daily lives!
It is nothing other than, essentially, being in a good mood, as in well-disposed, enjoying oneself, being likable and liking, jovial, etc. It is precisely this ordinary and remarkably plain (compared to the jhanic qualities above) enjoyment.
I wasn’t being insincere when I called Terry “percipient” for pointing out that the actualism is “ordinary common sense”… it really is. You don’t need any special meditative technologies or tools to do it… and as you may start to have gathered, the fact that you know and are proficient with those, doesn’t actually help much, or give you a leg-up in terms of actualism, because the enjoyment of actualism is something that you need no training to do, it’s something everyone already does on a regular basis anyway.
The distinguishing feature of actualism, of course, is that one finds ways to prolong this regular and ordinary enjoyment and appreciation, far beyond what normal people usually do – most people are not happy and harmless all day long. But the quality of this enjoyment, does not change – it’s rather the “quantity”* of it .
Cheers,
Claudiu
* EDIT: I’ll just add to say that in a sense the quantity is it’s own quality … there is basic feeling good and being in a good mood … then there is feeling great, as in “wow I feel great!”, then there is feeling excellent, eventually going all the way to being blown away by the amazing wonder and fun time one is having. It’s not a lackluster thing at all. But it’s the same basic “ingredient” - basically feeling good - ramped up all the way.
And to cover all the bases, there is a gap from even this to a PCE… but can clarify more later.