SFB Newsletter #21

Hey 👋,

There’s one topic on earth that interests me more than business. The more I study and understand it - the easier it is for me to run a great business.

My first mentor Lachlan Cameron originally introduced this topic to me, which he called ‘The Universal Laws.’

Now for reference, when I met Lachlan I was heavily medicated for psychosis and going nowhere in life.

90 days after meeting him I had burned the boats of my university degree (with one subject left to go) I threw my medication in the bin (never to take it again) and I had created a business plan for my new business that went on to do 7 figures and pull my brother and I out of poverty.

There are two specific moments that changed everything for me.

One day Lachlan sat me down and asked me to imagine we were sitting on a beach - watching big waves coming crashing into the shore…

Then he asked me a powerful question…

“Let’s imagine this scene is like your life - what to do you imagine those waves are doing to you right now?”

Immediately I said, ‘I feel like I’m getting smashed against the rocks - I’m drowning’

In the way Lachlan did - he never responded emotionally or made me feel like a victim, instead he asked me a powerful question.

He said, ‘You see those waves coming in - no matter what you or I do those waves are going to keep coming. You can keep getting smashed up against the rocks… Or you can sit here on the beach with me and we can study their patterns, we can learn how they form, where they come from, where they go and I’ll make you a promise - if you do that with me, you and I will eventually grab a surfboard, we’ll go out there and we’ll have the time of our lives. Is that something you can commit to?’

I remember the feeling, my eyes welled up and I had the feeling like a piece of puzzle of my life clicked into place.

You see I knew what he was talking about, in our previous meetings Lachlan had taught me about a series of concepts that he called ‘The Universal Laws.’

He had told me these Universal Laws affect your health, wealth and relationships. You can harmonise with them and be in alignment with these ‘natural principles’ or you can try to run, you can try to fight but you’ll just ‘keep drowning.’

He taught me that there was an order in the universe - that there was a cosmos in my chaos, and if I kept asking the right questions I’d eventually see it clearly.

A few weeks later he asked me… ‘Ben, what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?’

In an instant my mind flashed to one specific episode of psychosis that I had that was circa 25x more intense than any of the other episodes that I had.

And as I began to explain it…

He politely interrupted me and asked… ‘How did that benefit you?’

I remember being shocked at the question. I had tried to explain this scenario many times before but I’d never been asked a question like this.

In took me a few minutes, and with Lachlans encouragement…

The pennies started to drop one by one.

“Well I’m healthy - that experience gave me so much anxiety that I have to spend hours in the gym - it’s the only thing that makes me feel normal.”

“I’m not taking drugs anymore & I’m not hanging out with people who are taking drugs.”

“I changed jobs because I was spending too much time by myself in my old job thinking about that moment.”

“Because I’m not spending all my money on drugs - I’m saving money for the first time.”

“My family is helping me - I was honest with them about what I’d been doing and I grew closer to them as a result”

Every now and then Lachlan would pop in with a probe…

‘Interesting - what else?’

“Well I’m being mentored by you and I feel like I’m learning more in just one conversation than I have in the past 21 years of my life”

I felt a feeling of gratitude that I’d never felt in my life. I laughed, I had tears streaming down my face…

“I think I’ve just figured out the reason I went through all of this”

Within that 10 minute period I went from being a victim of my circumstances - a pawn on the chessboard of my life - to being able to see how these experiences were forming me and serving me.

A few days later I threw my medication in the bin and I never took it again.

All the momentum I’ve been able to generate in my life, the businesses, being able to help and be of service to others comes from that moment.

And since I’ve been a student of these principles, which I soon discovered are as old as history will allow us to see.

After working with Lachlan I fell in love with reading books and I started reading 10-20 books a month and I kept that pace for over 8 years.

In my 20’s I invested $50,000 into books. I also worked with a lot of mentors - I invested another $200,000 of the money I was making into mentorships with other great mentors.

Today I’ve chilled out a bit; I read about 5 per month at the moment. Mostly biographies.

Anyways - If I read a book that I love - I try to find that persons mentor or their references and then I read those books too.

I think it’s important to try and find the source in life. This was the thing that really solidified my growth.

I quickly discovered that the same concepts that lifted me from mediocrity also influenced people such as Dr John Demartini, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Jung, Max Planck, Issac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake by the church for talking about it,) Leonardo Da Vinci, Plato and Pythagoras to name a few.

I found a new group of hero’s who I looked up to intellectually and I read and learnt everything I could find from and about them.

From what I’ve discovered so far there was a group/cult of people in Ancient Egypt that used to revere and teach these principles. There are some books attributed to them pre Thales and Pythagoras who were two of the first greek philosophers.

If you’re interested in the book it’s called ‘The Corpus Hermeticum,’ and it may very well be the earliest reference to personal development currently available to read.

As a small anecdote on this… Maybe you’ve heard of the Medici family? What you may not know, is that the entrepreneur of the family, who originally created their wealth, Cozimo De Medici, then one of the richest men in the world employed a team of people to translate books of wisdom.

As the story goes he was nearing death when his team found books attributed to this very group - at the time his team was busy working on translating plato - but he ordered them to stop so he could have a chance to read the books before he died.

I also bumped into ‘Sacred Geometry’ which is the study of universal laws mapped out mathematically with geometry - also studied by all of the people above.

Pythagoras and Plato were obsessed with the concept that personally for me is one of the most fascinating concepts on earth.

It posits that there is a simple form of geometry that perfectly matches the expression of these universal laws.

I discovered that sacred geometry, hermeticism, alchemy, sufism, daoism and yoga - all ancient wisdom traditions 1500+ years old from different continents around the world are fingers pointing at the same thing.

They all involve techniques to harmonise the body and mind in an attempt to access a state of consciousness, ‘a higher minded’ state where you transcend your previously held limits.

I love the imagery that the sufi’s use for this - a burning fire.

Getting into this state could be considered real personal development, and for me - without it - we’re not talking about mindset, we’re talking about something else.

Now I get that this all can sound esoteric - but everyone has these moments in their lives.

Put simply it’s gratitude, love and wisdom.

What Lachlan taught me is that if I could be courageous enough to bring gratitude, love and wisdom to the darkest and most challenging moments of my life I would be free of them.

I’ve been keep a list of reference materials and quotes I’ve found over the years that speak to this. Here’s a small handful of my favourite ones…

For reference here are some of the laws.

1. The Principle of Polarity

There are two sides to everything. There is a north pole and a south pole. A night and a day, darkness and light, white and black, peace and war, infatuation and resentment, pride and shame, left and right, conscious and unconscious, waking and sleeping, right and wrong, plus and minus, positive and negative, In and out. Etc…

Everything has an opposite, and just like a magnet those areas are conserved in time.

All ‘bad things’ have benefits.

All ‘good things’ have drawbacks.

If you understand this you have a key to control your emotions - when you’re elated you can bring yourself back down.

(Being elated is not an objective state - it’s a fantasy state where you’re ignoring downsides - It bodes poorly for business.)

When you’re depressed you can regulate and bring yourself up by finding the hidden order.

2. The Principle of Rhythm

Everything rises and falls, the universe is not static, everything is in flux.

The tides of life rise and fall.

It’s the decisions we make on the peak that lead us into the valley and it’s the personal development we do in the valley that leads us to the peak.

We’re not static. The idea of enlightenment is a fallacy that disempowered people chase - we don’t one day finish working on ourselves - the very idea that you’re enlightened will lead you into the deepest of valleys.

It’s all in rhythm: Peaks and valleys.

3. The Principle of Gender

Gender manifests in all things. We each have a masculine and feminine side. The expressions of the poles could be considered two genders that attract and repulse.

Balancing our masculine and feminine sides is the key to finding harmony in ones life and with the surroundings.

The same rule also applies to your business and the other areas of your life.

Here is an example in health.

Strength = Masculine
Flexibility = Feminine
Harmony of Both = Movement

I’m sure you can imagine a bodybuilder who can’t wipe their own ass or a very airy ‘yogi’ who is so uncontrollably flexible that their joints are in genuine risk of dislocation.

One is dense and too bolted to the floor. The other is floating around with the pixies. We become addicted to our one sidedness.

Instead be like a martial artist who is incredibly flexible but also strong - they can move - and this also affects their mindset, which is why high level martial arts often spontaneously produces a spiritual outlook on life.

The real spirituality in life is marrying together the masculine and feminine parts of ourselves.

With just these principles I’ve been able to learn how to own people’s traits - any traits that I observe from another business person I admire - I have a process I use to gobble them up like a pacman.

I’ve also been able to transcend any of my past traumas by asking a series of questions - both of these processes I learnt from my current mentor Dr John Demartini, a man who has taken the study of these concepts further than anyone else I’ve met so far.

I also clued onto my Seed of Life system and it’s relationship to mental health.

I believe there are 7 areas of life - and that our personal momentum, whether we are moving forwards or backwards defines our ‘mental state.’

It seems as though the feeling of moving backwards in 5 or more of the areas is depression, 6 is bipolar and 7 is psychosis.

To this day this is something that my clients and I live by - we check in monthly on these areas score them out of 10, we set goals and we run a broad agenda.

This system I’ll dive more deeply into - inside another newsletter.

For now I wanted to introduce this general concept of universal laws and what it can mean for you life when you start studying them.

Everything I do here at systems for business is based on these principles - I guess you could say the business philosophies, systems, and exercises are all harmonising mechanisms because I’m trying to give people a taste of the laws.

Talk soon,

Ben.