Everyone is waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to finally end. But COVID isn’t going anywhere. It has come to change our thinking and will not leave before it’s done.

And it will take some time. Humanity is a huge mass of very different people. We need time to adjust, to feel the new reality, understand where it comes from, and why.

We will get used to COVID. By autumn, we should already feel more familiar with it. After all, people can get used to anything; they even get used to chronic diseases and learn to live with them, so the same will happen here.

At the moment, the system is still unstable; it is still jerking and jolting from the impact of the virus. But the transition phase will subside and the system will take on a new appearance: a perception of humanity as one whole. Humanity is suffering from all sorts of problems: hunger, fires, droughts, hurricanes, the list is endless. But even now we are beginning to perceive these problems integrally, together, as one whole.

“We were given COVID-19 to cure us. At the end of it, we will be much healthier and our relationships will be much kinder—both between people and between countries.”

The next blow after the coronavirus is going to be a shortage of the most basic necessities: food, water, medicines, and electricity. This will lower people’s demands and will force them to become more modest. People will have no drive to travel around the world.

As it continues, the coronavirus will teach us the wisdom of life. We only need to know that we are in an integral system that is moving toward a new state of balance, preordained in nature. As this process unfolds, it takes us through different states. If we support the process, we will experience the states as good. If we resist it, we will feel it as painful and oppressive. But it’s all in order to lead us toward complete recovery from egoism.

Nothing happens by accident, but only for the purpose of correction. If we examine what is happening today with the final goal of unity in mind, we will find that there is a clear line leading from the current position to the endpoint. If we can see that, we will see that everything is done with purpose.

The essence of the process is an ever-increasing connection. Currently, we feel divided, strangers. We suffer because of our oppositeness from the rest of nature, but that suffering will impel us to connect. As we connect, we will become increasingly similar to the rest of nature and as a result, the pain will invert to pleasure. The sooner we transition to the state of connection, the sooner we will invert any suffering to pleasure.

Although we naturally oppose connection, since our nature is inherently individualistic, nature guides one state at a time until we agree to connect. When we agree, we will discover its myriad benefits. Just as brothers quarrel and fight when they are young but become close when they grow up and grow wiser, so we will come to see the benefits of connection after we grow out of our sense of entitlement.

We were given COVID-19 to cure us. At the end of it, we will be much healthier and our relationships will be much kinder—both between people and between countries. Now the borders are closed due to the pandemic. But in time we will realize their futility because the connection is the only solution that allows us to overcome the problems that the virus has imposed on us.

It turns out that COVID is not a disease; it is a symptom of recovery. This is what happens with every disease: We do not feel the disease itself, but the body’s reaction to it as it tries to recover. Painful symptoms are signs of recovery. The coronavirus pandemic is showing us the way to recovery from self-centeredness. It is propelling us forward and we should respond accordingly.

We shouldn’t simply hide from it. Although at first, we must distance ourselves from each other, subsequently, we should examine how we can grow closer. If we could think about others rather than ourselves, the virus would not pose any danger. We would be able to go anywhere because if we care about others, we will not harm them.

I know that most people still do not see it this way, but in a few months, it will be clear that the coronavirus is building the correct connections between us so that everyone thinks about others rather than about oneself. When we achieve this, we will all be healthy.