Across borders and cultures, the pandemic has resulted in increased self-reflection for people all over the world.

It has caused people to reevaluate their relationship with work, leading them to find a different job or return to school. It has resulted in new perspectives on family, as many of us spent more time at home than ever before. And it has led to a resurgence of interest in personal growth and spiritual learning, with an emphasis on the community that the pandemic has mostly made impossible — at least in-person.

Thanks to technology, spiritual teachers have been able to remain connected to their followers throughout the pandemic by adapting their in-person retreats and classes to a virtual format.

For many of these teachers and gurus, the change has empowered them not only to maintain their existing audience, but expand their reach. People who would never have considered a remote class with a spiritual guide are now searching for those opportunities as a way of coping with prolonged isolation and other pandemic-related problems.

These are a few examples of spiritual teachers who have opted to take their classes online during the pandemic, bringing their message of hope and inner strength to a world that desperately needs more optimism.

Oracle Girl

OracleGirl is a perfect example of the kind of positive message that resonates more than ever with a fractured world.

As her website says: “Embodying more love on this planet. The future is positive. Dream. Rebuild your societies. Purify yourself and all beings of the slave self.”

She offers videos, audio and articles based on themes including addiction, childbirth, body integrity, and “personal purification.” Her reboot group is offered online every Wednesday and Saturday. It’s described as:

“Personal purifications. Physically re-enter this reality at a new much higher frequency minus the slave self. Embody your own purity, automatically shedding the identities, family patterns and personal issues controlling you, your loved ones, and your family line.”

John de Ruiter

An inspiring speaker and teacher with a long-standing following, John de Ruiter now offers Zoom meetings several times a week. With two years of experience behind him, de Ruiter has developed an intimate way of connecting with people through these video meetings, which often involve one-on-one conversations.

People who join these meetings often come with specific questions for John de Ruiter, who welcomes questions about anything from spirituality and philosophy to more personal issues like parenting, work-life balance, and sexuality.

If you’d like to get a sense of his teaching style before joining a Zoom meeting, you can listen to some of his teachings on SoundCloud or just join one of de Ruiter’s community events, like the movie nights offered through his College of Integrated Philosophy.

Isaac Shapiro

With decades of experience in meeting with groups in person, Isaac Shapiro took his teaching online during the pandemic, offering classes and meetings through Zoom.

His virtual retreats are “an invitation to participate in an online community and to have the direct sense of participating in each others’ wellbeing,” his website says.

Over a long life of bringing his teaching to others, Isaac developed the skill to “track what is happening in the nervous system of participants.”

Meetings with Isaac are ”an invitation to recognise the Truth of yourself, who you are and have always been,” according to his site. “As you are already. This there is no need for any effort or “getting there”, just the simple recognition of That in which everything appears.”

The pandemic has made life more difficult for people all over the world. For many of them, taking a course full of positivity from one of these respected teachers has made life a little easier.

Donny white