There is a Catholic priest on the EWTN channel named Father John Corapi. He often tells his story about having been a drug addict, homeless, sleeping with anyone at all, and in-and-out of detox in the VA hospital. Apparently this was his life until his late 30's. His mother begged him to pray, and at that time all he could manage was one little prayer per day. But in time he gained strength and is now a sought-after lecturer and priest. His story has been substantiated, and that is one good example of a person totally turning around with a little supernatural help. http://www.fathercorapi.com

I also had an Uncle who was much like that: a degenerate gambler, and alcoholic. Because he would run the streets for days at a time he even lost his family and home. No one could reason with him and many times we didn't even know where he was. From time to time he was in jail. Somehow, someone coerced him into taking some Silva Mind Control classes at the soup kitchen, as he tells it, and within a couple of months he was reading the books, listening to the tapes, working, had a decent apartment, money in the bank and was gaining the trust of his wife and kids again. He did the Silva exercises faithfully, as it resonated well with him, and before we knew it, he had a new life. It had lasting power, by the way, and 20 years later he is still a very successful man, who never returned to his old ways.

Those are two true complete turn-arounds that I have heard of!

Can you get a personality facelift?

I know personally several Christians who say that their personality changed for the better when they gave their life to God. Some of these people were leading destructive lives, and had hit bottom, so they really had nowhere else to go. I suppose that can give you plenty of motivation to change.

All of the twelve-step programs teach a principle of "giving your life over to a higher power" as part of their road to recovery. The process of healing begins with the admission that your life has become unmanageable, and that you are powerless to control it. Once you surrender, you begin to get better.

Whether you call it "Giving your life to God," or "Connecting to your source," or "Surrendering to a higher power," I think it amounts to the same thing: getting your ego out of the way.

I have summarized this method so many times, that now I finally decided to post it as it is in its source. In my opinion, the hermetic spiritual method which can be found in Franz Bardon's books is like a science among magic. Science is non-esoteric knowledge that is officially accepted in our world. It explains how things work from the deepest point of insight. We use the fire to launch firework and have fun, but when we get to know chemistry, we understand how do the firework work and we are able to construct one ourselves. And so most of spiritual writings are like a firework and a fire, and hermetic knowledge is like chemistry.

1. Autosuggestion or the Secret of Subconscious

Before proceeding to describe the exercises of the second step, let me explain the secret of the subconscious and its practical consequences. In the same way as normal consciousness has its seat in the soul, and is activated by the cerebrum in the body, consequently the head, subconsciousness is a property of the soul, residing in the cerebellum, i.e., the back part of the head. With respect to the magical practice, let us deal with the study of the psychological function of the cerebellum, consequently the subconscious.

In every individual that is in his right senses, the normal sphere of consciousness is intact, i.e., he always and at any time is capable of making use of the functions of normal consciousness. As it results from our investigations, there is no power in the universe nor in man that does not vary between opposites. Hence we may consider subconsciousness as the opposite to normal consciousness. That which in normal consciousness we subsume by the concepts of thinking, feeling, willing, memory, reason, and intellect is reflected in our subconsciousness in a contrary way. Practically speaking, we can regard our subconsciousness as our opponent. The incentive or the impulse to all that is undesirable, such as our passions, our failures, our weaknesses, originates just in this very sphere of consciousness. To the pupil now falls the task of introspection to disclose the work of this subconsciousness, according to the key of the elements or the tetrapolar magnet. This is a satisfactory task in as much as the pupil will acquire self-reliance by his own reflection or meditation.

Hence, subconsciousness is the incentive of all we do not wish for. Let us learn how to transmute this, so to speak, antagonistic aspect of our ego, so that it not only does no harm, but on the contrary will help to realize our desires. Subconsciousness needs time and space in the material world for its realization, two basic principles valid for all things that have to be transmuted into reality from the causal world. Withdrawing time and space from the subconscious, the opposite polarity will cease to bring its influence to bear upon us, and we shall be able to realize our wishes through the subconscious. This sudden elimination of the subconscious offers the key for the practical use of autosuggestion. If, e.g., we inculcate in the subconsciousness the wish of not giving in tomorrow or any other time, to any of our passions, say smoking or drinking alcohol, subconsciousness will have time enough to put some hindrance, directly or indirectly, in our way. In most of these cases, mainly, in the presence of feeble or underdeveloped willpower, subconsciousness will nearly always succeed in taking us by surprise or causing failures. On the other hand, of we exclude the concepts of time and space from subconsciousness while impregnating it with a desire, only the positive pole of subconsciousness will affect us, normal consciousness being equated, and our impregnate desire must have the success we are expecting. This knowledge and the possibilities related to it, are of the greatest importance for the magical development and have, therefore, to be considered as far as self-suggestion is concerned.

The phrasing to choose for autosuggestion must always be expressed in the present or imperative form. You should not say: “I shall stop drinking or smoking or whatever”. The correct form is: “I do not smoke, I do not drink”, or else, “I do not like smoking or drinking” and so on, according to whatever you wish to suggest in a positive or negative sense. The key or clue to self-suggestion is to be found in the form of the phrasing. It is that which, always and in every respect, has to be considered if you wish to do autosuggestion through subconsciousness.

Subconsciousness is acting in the most effective and penetrating way during the night, when man is asleep. In the sate of sleep, the activity of normal consciousness is suspended, subconsciousness working in its place. The most appropriate time for autosuggestion receptivity, therefore, is the moment when the body is resting drowsily in bed, i.e., immediately before falling asleep as well as immediately after waking up, when we remain still half-awake. That does not mean that a different time would be quite unsuitable for self-suggestion, but these tow moments are most promising, subconsciousness being most responsive then. That is why the magician will never go to sleep in an emotional attitude such as anger or depression, worries which would have an unfavorable influence in his subconsciousness, going on in the same train of thoughts with which he had fallen asleep. Always go to sleep with peaceful and harmonious thoughts or ideas about success, health and pleasant feelings.

Before you practice autosuggestion, make up a small chain of 40 beads. A knotted piece of string also will do fine. This expedient is only meant to avoid counting when you are reiterating the suggestive formula over and over, so as not to divert your attention. This little gadget also will serve to make sure how many disturbances happened when you were practicing concentration and meditation exercises. All you have to do is move a bead or a know at every interruption.

The practical use of autosuggestion is very simple. If you have worded that which you want to achieve in a precise sentence in the present and imperative form, such as: “I feel better and better every day”, or “I do not like smoking [or: drinking, &c]”, or “I am healthy, content, happy”, then you may proceed to the real practice. Immediately before falling asleep, take your string of beads or knots and, whether in an undertone, softly, or in your mind, according to your surroundings, repeat the phrase you have chosen and move one bead or knot at every repetition until you arrive at the end of the string. Now you know for sure that you repeated the formula 40 times. The main point is that you imagine your wish as being realized already and having actual existence. If you do not yet feel sleepy after the 40 repetitions, engage yourself for a while longer with the idea that your wish has been accomplished, and keep doing so until at last you fall asleep with your desire still in mind. You must try to transfer your desire to the sleep. Should you fall asleep while reiterating the formula, the purpose will be achieved.

In the morning, when you are not quite up and have some time to spare, you ought to reach for the string of beads and repeat the exercise once more. Some people get up several times during the night to urinate or for some other reasons. If so, they can repeat this exercise as well, and they will attain their desires all the sooner [Editor’s note: A more modern practice is to use a repeating tape cassette deck to accomplish this automatically]. Now the question arises: what kind of wishes can be accomplished by self-suggestion? Principally, every wish can be fulfilled as far as mind, soul and body are concerned, for example: refining of the character, repression of ugly qualities, weaknesses, disorders, recovery of health, removal and promotion of various aptitudes, development of faculties, and so on. Certainly, desires having nothing to do with the personality as lottery numbers and such can never be fulfilled.

Initiation into Hermetics

The Magic Story exactly is about what your question is on, a man very down and out transformed himself into the opposite of what he was. I have heard of people doing this with Avatar and with the Sedona Method, but there are many ways NLP EFT TAT Hypnosis to name a few.

Our personality is made up of our responses to the events in our lives since conception, and of our dna. According to Matrix Reimprinting, we can go back and change the response to the events in our memories, thus changing our personality in part. As far as DNA goes, according to Bruce Lipton, Dawson Church, et al, Everything is energy, including DNA. With our minds and/or other methods including EFT, we can change our DNA, thus enabling us to change our personality. I have not discovered yet how they suggest we change our DNA, so I cannot tell you. There is a movie I have yet to order, "The Living Matrix" this should explain a lot.