Yes, I would say that a kind of... immense spiritual awareness, or contemplative understanding of the interconnected nature of reality (and yourself) constitutes a kind of very strong belief.

Though I don't think its explicitly stated in the movies that the 'spoon kid' ... literally pulls himself out of the matrix...

In MxO, which is I guess roughly 'secondary canon', one of the kinds of character archetypes you can play as, is basically 'zen master', so yeah I would tend to agree that thats probably another reasonably valid 'canonical' way by which someone could escape the matrix on their own, transcend 'reality'.