There are many, many misconceptions around faith.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that faith & belief are more or less the same.
In fact, the difference is huge.
Belief stems from ignorance. Only if you don’t know something can you believe in it, or disbelieve it (which is simply believing that it is untrue).
If you believe in something, it is not total. It can never be total. Some people think that they believe O so totally in something that it can hurt their feelings if people disrespect that, but they are simply fooling themselves. Being disrespected is a reflection of their own doubts.
It can never be total because belief is a product of the mind and the mind is always fragmented, always absorbed by this and by that.
Faith is the peak, the fruit of wisdom. It has nothing to do with belief or disbelief. It is beyond.
The root of faith is understanding. Faith is when you have pushed understanding to its farthest limits, but the mystery of existence keeps unfolding infinitely before your eyes, and it beggars your ability to keep up with it. So, you have to surrender, you have to trust. There is no other way.
You can only contemplate and contemplate the mystery. That contemplation is faith. Faith can only happen with understanding, with wisdom, otherwise you don’t have eyes to see that eyes can only see so far.
Faith can never happen to one who is rooted in the mind, it is beyond the mind. On the other hand, belief is very much of the mind. Belief is simply a thought through which we choose to see the world. It is a point of view.
And like all point of views, it can never be true because a point of view is precisely not the view itself. Simply a distortion of what it is in truth.
Faith can never get triggered, can never be deceived, can never be hurt.
Those who hold beliefs are deceiving themselves all the time and are easy to trigger, easy to hurt. In fact, they go on wandering the world doing just that to each other. There must be something deep down, in search for balance, that pushes them to do so…
Faith is re-discovered innocence. Belief is naiveté, perpetuated. Faith is not belief.