"from what I understand/understood"?

Rasoul"from what I understand/understood"

This just means what it says: 'I understand/understood that...'.

or "what I understood was (from a text/speech etc)"?

Rasoulplease explain with examples

from what I understand ~ the way I understand it (is that) ~ as far as I know ~ my personal understanding of it (is that)

See examples at http://fraze.it/n_search.jsp?q=%22from+what+I+understand%22&l=0

now I'm confused. "the way I understand it (is that)" and "as far as I know" give two different meanings, right?
what am I missing here?

Rasoul"the way I understand it (is that)" and "as far as I know" give two different meanings, right?

I see them as nearly equivalent when used as paraphrases of "from what I understand" as used in most sentences.

Have you checked out the examples I linked you to? In most of those examples it wouldn't matter much if you said "from what I understand" a

yea I did, but most of them made more sense to me if "as far as I know" was used.
in any case, thanks for your reply.
Im gonna go to bed. hopefully I'll understand it better tomorrow