First up, the metaphysical stuff. I just don't know.
Second the recovery stuff. I was lucky enough to come into AA at a very low point and I just did as I was told for a good long while, and slowly my life started to get better. I think, being honest, I parked my beliefs. Maybe I even put them up on blocks and threw a dustsheet over them.
So then what I had was a couple of years experience of starting to recover from alcoholism against which to compare my beliefs. I think I asked myself what had happened. I think my reply was that I had come to believe that everything was connected, I was a part of something bigger and when I stopped believing solely in myself, I began to feel better. Safer, calmer, stuff like that. I think I may have borrowed part of my new life from a Bill Hicks riff, but there you go. I think at that point I decided that I wouldn't throw out the old beliefs, because I didn't know when I might need them again, but equally I would leave them out in the garage, on the blocks, with the sheet on. As far as I know they're still there, I haven't looked at them for a while.
I think also that I decided that I would try and keep practicing the new things I had been taught because they made me feel better. I could see that some people I met who practiced those things were completely doolally - as if they were on spiritual steroids - while other people seemd to have these buff demeanours. So I figured - figure - that if I practice what they do I won't have to get the old beliefs off the blocks, I'll be fit enough to get where I need under my own power.