The True Meaning of Faith
Belief, in its original, 17th century sense meant, "an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions; I commit myself, I engage myself." In other words, trust in God was not something that one simply decided. It was through committed action that rendered one's relationship to God. Belief was something that was discovered through practice.
Years ago I came across a talk by Karen Armstrong on the Golden Rule. What stayed with me was a side point about the word belief.
In its older sense, belief did not mean agreeing to a set of propositions. It meant something closer to commitment: I engage myself. Trust in God was not something you decided. It formed through practice, day in and day out, and the doctrine only made sense once you were living it. Armstrong's point was that religious teachings are a summons to action, and you understand them only when you act on them.
The Yoga Sutras work the same way. There is a worldview under the text, but it is barely described, and it does not much matter whether the yogi believes in it. The text is organized around practice, the doing. What comes out of the practice is a kind of insight you can trust. That is belief in the old sense. You did not take it on. You arrived at it.
Once, I tried to open a debate with an orthodox Jewish friend about his interpretation of the Torah. He told me we couldn't have the discussion because he understood the Torah to be written by God, and I understood it to be written by men. To talk with him, I would have had to disbelieve what I knew. That is the modern arrangement: a comprehensive account of the world that asks you to override your own sense of things. Blind faith is claiming to know a subject you never studied.
Practice can turn into the same trap. I've seen yoga and meditation teachers whose whole lives are dedicated to a severe version of a tradition, even when it injures them and the people they teach. They can contort their bodies. They stopped growing a long time ago. The adherence became the point.
Whatever discipline you keep, its job is to put you in contact with something you could not have seen otherwise. Stay with it long enough, and what forms is different from blind faith. It is the kind of trust you know in your bones, even in the moments you've lost your way.