Warmest greetings to you Master Li and all my fellow practitioners.

My name is Earl Rhodes, I am 36 years old, from London, England. I have practised Falun Dafa since August 1997.

Since I was a child, I believed in a spirit world, different dimensions, an afterlife, reincarnation and God. I have been thinking about the meaning of life since I was quite young.

Six months before I obtained the Dafa, I started learning Aikido and went to the class every week in an attempt to get fit and shake off my feeling of apathy and sadness which resulted from the formal separation from my partner and children. The Aikido was OK, but it didn’t fill a philosophical gap that I wanted to fill.

I encountered Falun Dafa at an exhibition in London, I bought the book Zhuan Falun and an instruction video almost automatically. When I got home, I started to read. How fascinating. How marvellous. I read 75 pages and fell asleep. The next day I went to the exhibition stand again and was invited to learn the exercises outside on the grass. The exercises seemed so natural. The lotus palm reminded me of ballet hands, and holding the wheel above the head was also balletic. I remembered, as a child dancer, I thought there must be a way of systematically stretching the whole body, the first exercise seemed to fit the bill. But most of all the people who taught me the exercises seemed so honest, pleasant, trustworthy and calm.

When I just started practising Falun Gong, at first I lost weight so much that I could fit in trousers with 29-30 inch waist, then gradually, I put it back on and I noticed that I had developed a growth of new hair on my head.

I stopped smoking cigarettes after about two weeks, but it took me five months to stop smoking cannabis. I planned to stop once I had finished what I had stocked at home. However when I smoked, I had just a bad taste and a burning sensation on my tongue when I did the sitting exercise. At that point I knew that Dafa transcends all. I haven’t smoked since.

Drinking alcohol seemed easy to stop. I just stopped drinking one month after I started practising. I say it seemed easy but how many times had I tried to stop drinking, smoking and drugs? Well, I’ll tell you: lots of times and every time I went back. Only with Dafa and Master Li’s help could I manage to stop.

I also stopped Aikido classes two weeks after I started Falun Dafa. When we did backward falls, instead of doing my usual eight, I found that I could do all ten, and faster than the instructor with seemingly no effort. At that moment, I knew that Dafa had changed me in such a short time, and that Falun Dafa left Aikido so far behind that it seemed irrelevant.

Besides, why should I want to defend myself anyway? If anyone wants to hit me, great! I won’t stop him. Thanks! But it hasn’t happened yet.

Since starting Dafa, I’ve kept celibate. I’m sure I have had help in that department too. I had become interested in a girl just as I started Dafa, and we began to spend some time together. Then I developed an enormous pain in my lower abdomen, around my pubic bone. The pain was so much that couldn’t walk properly. That put me off. The relationship stopped and I stayed celibate, except for my dreams. There were so many tests, some I pass, some I fail. I still have some distance to go to abandon this attachment.

Early on in my practice, I experienced some incidents of demonic inference. One day, I had just read Zhuan Falun II, I went into the back garden to practise and had done the first exercise twice, I happened to look at the moon, which was full. I was thinking about the moon etc. when suddenly a large image appeared in the sky.

The moon became the right eye of an enormous demon head that took up my whole field of view. The clouds seemed to form parts of the head, which had a great wide forehead, large ears and horns. The mouth had two fangs in the right lower jaw, a wide nose and a pointy chin.

I was quite surprised but I said to myself that I wasn’t afraid, then I did the first exercise for the third time, when I opened my eyes again the moon, the face, even the clouds had all disappeared.

Some months later a similar thing happened. I looked up at the clouds, and saw a fox head looking at me. I looked away expecting it to disappear, then looked again at the clouds, but it was still there. This time it looked as if its tongue was sticking out. I thought "you are nothing to a true practitioner, even a small finger will be enough to crush you". And went on my way.

I ride a motorbike and had a few tests associated with this. Once when I was riding very slowly, a car reversed out of a side road towards me. I called out but the car kept coming and knocked me and the bike over. As it was happening, I had a feeling of inevitability and thought that this was my test.

I landed on my right knee, with the revving bike on top of me. I climbed out and disengaged the gear. The driver came out of the car and was apologetic. I said: "Don’t worry, never mind" and went on my way again on the bike. Apart from a small piece of foot peg which became loose and fell off, there was otherwise no damage to the bike, even the paintwork wasn’t scratched. My knee was scuffed but the next day there was no pain.

More recently, I became sandwiched between a car and a van travelling at over 60 kilometres an hour, my handlebars were bumped to wobble, the mirrors knocked out of line, but the bike didn’t fall. I drove on. I’m sure I was protected again.

I later remembered that at the time of the squeeze, I thought "you’re not giving me enough room", which I now think was not a correct attitude. Isn’t it because of my karma that this should happen to me?

My mother was a healer, she craved money, she was ill and now weak. Can I change it? Should I change it? I don’t think so now.

There are many daily tests and experiences, too many to tell you all of them. Some I think I have passed, others I think I haven’t passed yet. So I try to look inside of myself to see where I can make improvements. Some of my mistakes are so disturbing it questions me, but I’m determined to try. I hope you are too.

I hope also that my experience sharing helps someone reach a better understanding on his/her way to a perfect completion.

Thank You.