4 types of meditative insights

From an article by Jermaine and Rebecca Francis:

When you have become still before God, you want to know him, to get His thoughts. "He gives us meaning in our spirits. That meaning can come in a millisecond, and yet it can be full of what feels like hours or days' worth of content... to translate Spirit revelation into words, we first need to know how we're processing the revelation through our minds. We receive the revelation by our spirits; we do not receive it by our minds... we need our minds to make sense of, meditate on, communicate, and apply the revelation..." (short test on next page)

What happens in our minds can be much richer than what happens in the natural world because of something called "the theater of the mind." "The theater of the mind" is the culmination of colors, shapes, sensations, smells, sounds, movement, multitasking and backstory that exist in our minds. Our parents called it our "imagination."

When God speaks to our spirits, we can experience much of that revelation in the theater of our minds. In one (or more) of these 4 ways: Sight (if something is described, you can "see it" in your minds' eye or imagination), Sound (ever rehearsed a conversation with someone in your head?), Sensing (what you pick up on that is unsaid including body language "vibe" gut-feeling etc.), Knowing (can't explain it but you just know something; prescient).

A Quick Test
"Let's start by figuring out some of the easiest ways you identify what God is saying to you. You could identify what God is saying in any or all of the ways cited: sight, sound, sense, or knowing, but at least one of these ways is probably easier for you than the others.

We all think in the theater of our minds, but we all think most comfortably in at least one of these ways. This is where we get the idea of learning styles: auditory learning versus visual versus kinesthetic, and so on. This is how you process information...

Are you ready for the test? I'm going to put the test at the end of this paragraph, and I don't want you to read on until you've finished the test. Take enough time to pause and answer the question before accidentally reading on. Here is the question: What is your name?

Did you answer the question?

Now let's examine how you thought the answer. Choose the one that is most true. Did you:
• See your name in your mind's eye, as if it was written down on something?
• Hear your name being said, such as in your voice when you introduce yourself, or your mom's voice calling your name?
• Get a strong feeling about who you are, maybe your qualities or a sense of pride?
• Immediately know your name, without any clue where the knowing came from?

Each answer represents sight, sound, sensing and knowing, respectively. You may have had more than one of these as a reaction to the question, "What is your name?" If you had more than one, that's okay and is quite common. If you don't know which one was your reaction, it was probably the last one—knowing.

Now you have a real-time example of how the theater of your mind processes information. You already know your name, but you had to think your name in reaction to the question. Similarly, when you receive revelation by the Spirit of God, you have it in your spirit, but you will have to think about the revelation using your mind to convey it effectively to other people, or even to continue to meditate on it yourself."​​