I know I am vague, but if you ask me, true understanding can not come through monologues - it has to be shared. It's like love - "Nobody can tell you you're in love. You just are."
Anyway... the way I look at the world is something I cannot truly write down and describe with words - not because you wouldn't understand, but because I myself is unable to express it with pure text. But for what it's worth... this is some of what I believe.
I completely agree with the last thing you said, about faith. I believe what I believe, not because I have seen it to be true, and not because people have told me it's true - but because I know it for myself. I can feel it, it's something nobody can ever take from me.
As for what I actually believe... I would not place myself among any organized form of religion.
There is with no doubt things beyond what we can explain with our mere physical senses - and I believe that these things can be both felt and experienced by anyone who has the will do to so. If you ask me, there is no truths or falses - everything is just as true as one chooses to believe - and everything exists.
Take Pandora as an example. It might not be physically tangible - but that does not mean it isn't real. It is highly so - but we need to go beyond our physical senses for it to be tangible.
I was born and raised in the religion for which i consider a blessing. It's made it so that the beliefs are set in stone because they are the ones that I was taught as a child.
as for what makes me believe, that is something that everyone struggles with. It's called Faith.
The best analogy I can come up with is to have someone put their hands over your eyes. They say, "Do you see me?" No. "But you know that Im here." it's the same with faith. Faith is believing in things that are not seen, but are TRUE. People say that they need to see something in order to believe it. That's full-on CRAP. IT YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO NEED TO BELIEVE IN IT BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT'S REAL.