**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Wisdom > **🌱 Planted:** Tue 6 May 2025 --- > [!quote] > "Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and meaningful. Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God." — [[Alan Watts]] [^1] We need to be able to tell the difference between belief and faith. Many get the two confused, especially when it comes to religion, spirituality and the true nature of reality. Belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would wish it to be, or rather that the truth is accepted on the condition that it fits in with our preconceived ideas and wishes. It emerges, ironically, from a place of doubt. We believe, because we doubt[^2]. If we did not doubt, then we would have no use for belief. Belief is our way of abating feat and creating security and certainty in a world that is nothing but unpredictable and uncertain. Faith, on the other hand, arises from an entirely different place. It doesn't seek security or cling to predetermined answers, and it doesn't exist to counter doubt. Faith transcends the need for questioning and is the clarity that remains when all questions dissolve. It is falling in love with the unpredictability and uncertainty of what is. The great irony is that those who claim the strongest beliefs whilst calling it faith and pointing out the lack of faith in others, are often doing so because of the level of doubt and disbelief held within their being. If this was indeed genuine faith, there would be no need for proclamation, defences, arguments or validation. Where belief requires answers to still the mind, faith is the stillness itself. And so the path from belief to faith is about the gradual surrender and willingness to stay with the questions and live amongst the uncertainty—to become one with the stillness—rather than the accumulation of more certainty. --- **➡️ Next:** [[]] **⬅️ Back:** [[]] [^1]: [[The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts]] [^2]: [OSHO: Why I Am Against Belief - YouTube](https://youtu.be/BoMi7wn_-m4?si=gNXNIk1XG4bCdF23)