For me the approach of learning by saying the words and going on גירסא seems to work along with trust in God. That is to say that often when I am learning in this way I find that I have not understood much, and yet I try to have faith that what I am supposed to understand-I will understand. That is to say: that trust in God seems to be an important principle in this, and many other aspects of my life. But there does not seem to be any way of knowing when one is supposed to have simple trust with no effort-- as opposed to when one is expected to have trust along with effort.

I would venture to say the reason that there is no clear criterion to know is because of the fact that there are areas that reason can not enter into. And if reason tries, it collapses into contradictions. [The is the famous idea of  Kant. (Or maybe not so famous. At any rate, it was by Kelley Ross's web site on the Kant-Fries school of thought that I became aware of this approach.]