I immediately thought of the book "Thinking, fast and slow" from reading your comment. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it talks about two "Systems" that guide our thinking. From the description of the book: "System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical."

The more you do something, or think about something - the more it becomes a "System 1" operation(fast, intuitive). Like typing on a keyboard for example, when you first started using a keyboard you had to think about every letter you want to hit, but now you probably don't even think about it for a millisecond. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Intuitive understanding = Action * Repetition.

Read the book if you haven't, it might be the kind of material you're looking for. I'm not a big fan of psychology and I think it's 90% mumbo jumbo, but this book hit a few nails for me.