Q:
How important do you think it is to start with a clearly defined aim?
Critical. An aim should be clearly, simply and precisely defined. This is necessary, so that we know where we’re going; know what we have to do to achieve the aim; and then, clearly and simply, know that, in fact, we have done so.
This give us three overall stages in the process of moving towards the aim:
injunction;
application;
verification.
If the aim is messy, exactly where we’re going isn’t quite definite; the practical measures we employ to achieve the aim are likely to be inefficient; and looking back, recapitulating our work, will be imprecise and muddled. Verifying the degree to which our realization of the aim is a just-fit to the aim as defined, is also not quite clear. Perhaps, the external or functional aspects of the aim may have been discharged, but this accomplishment is not quite an achievement or realisation of the quality embodied in the aim.
Q:
How do the results of one’s efforts reflect the clarity and precision of the original aim?
As above. There is a Guitar Craft aphorism:
If we don’t know where we’re going, we’ll probably get there.
Q:
How important is it to success that one’s aim(s) somehow relate and synchronise with one’s Will? (I use this word for lack of a better one to represent an essential, spiritual or ontological need or characteristic).
Will is a difficult notion to grasp, for various reasons. So, how to approach this in a practical manner? A useful practical approach is by addressing the properties or powers of the Will.
Primarily, the most direct and available in our own experience is the quality of our attention. To what degree can we exercise / direct the volitional attention? This is then a very practical matter and available to practising. One Guitar Craft exercise is the Division of Attention exercise; which is actually a series of exercises.
Choice and decision are other properties of the Will; and both may be practised.
Q:
I use this word for lack of a better one to represent an essential, spiritual or ontological need or characteristic.
I prefer need or necessity as an approach. The Guitar Craft aphorism applicable here is:
honour necessity, honour sufficiency.
A second aphorism…
the necessary is possible;
the optional is expensive;
the arbitrary is unlikely.
This gives us actions that are:
necessary and unnecessary,
intentional/volitional and unintentional/non-volitional.
Once again, this becomes a practical question: what is necessary for me? Alternatively expressed: what do I need?and/or what do I need to do?
Clearly, there are existential necessities and responsibilities. But, there is also essential necessity, however we might term our sense of essential need.
Q:
Am I correct in assuming that you conceptualise hazard as a process/ force/ energy that is not random occurrence but somehow determined through an interaction of the perceiver and the perceived?
One way of approaching hazard is to say that, even where there is ontological necessity (whatever we understand by that), where there is commitment to a worthy aim, even undertaken by the deserving, a favourable outcome is in no way guaranteed. And that this is both an inevitable, and necessary, feature of any creative process.
Another way of expressing this: to have the freedom to achieve the aim, there can be no guarantee of success. If there were a guarantee, there would be no aim, no freedom, no succeeding. The Creative Process would be only mechanical; ie not creative at all.
I do not understand this as determined through an interaction of the perceiver and the perceived.
Not sure if this is any help at all!
Sunday 22nd. July, 2009;
Monasterio Nuestra Señora De Los Angeles / Monjas Dominicas
Mare de Deu del Roser, 2.
Sant Cugat (08174),
Barcelona.
