There are some interesting thoughts expressed here. I can relate quite a bit to what toomuchpain and threshold are both saying. Just like toomuchpain, I got a lot of the “you think too much” sort of comments when I first came to AA. Those comments used to drive me nuts. Fortunately I ran into someone who gently challenged some of my fundamental notions of reality, and did it in a way that made me think. This in turn allowed me to do some investigation. For me, some degree of understanding was needed in order for to move forward. What was also needed was a certain amount of open mindedness, in order to examine how I searched for the truth, as well as what I found.
I think threshold has a good point about 'doing the thing'. Sometimes that’s the only way to reach certain kinds of understanding. It's a bit like a person who has never tasted a strawberry trying to understand what it tastes like by listening to peoples description of the taste. You can get a sense of it, but in the end, you need to actually eat a strawberry to know what it tastes like. But even then, you can only know what a strawberry tastes like to you.