To begin with we learn a Form. This must be practised asiduously to get it as close to your teacher's as possible. Always working from basic principles; always coming back to those principles. Eventually the Form is so internalised that it becomes second nature. Then the real work starts: practising the Form to take you back to your first nature. This requires a judicious breaking of principles to come to a deeper understanding of what they really mean. Somehow coaxing the energy to take you deeper than your understanding. Using Form to reach the formless. What Ueshiba called using spirit to transcend form.