No. 84 of 124 · A Name of God · The Long Healing Prayer
my Soul
When Bahá'u'lláh addresses God as "my Soul," the boundary between the one who prays and the One who is prayed to trembles with a love almost too close for words.
I call on Thee O Thou my Soul, O Thou my Beloved, O Thou my Faith! Thou the Sufficing, Thou the Healing, Thou the Abiding, O Thou Abiding One! Bahá'u'lláh, The Long Healing Prayer · read the full prayer
What “my Soul” means
What follows reflects on this name of God, offered for your own contemplation, and not as an authoritative interpretation of the Bahá'í Writings, which rests with ‘Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi alone.
To call God "my Soul" is to say something startling: that the divine is not remote, not merely overhead or beyond the horizon, but nearer to us than our own interior life. The soul is usually understood as the most private, most essential part of a person, and yet here, in this single phrase, the Manifestation of God addresses the Creator as though God were the very soul of his soul. This is not pantheism or a blurring of the distinction between creature and Creator. It is, rather, an expression of the overwhelming intimacy that characterizes the mystic relationship between the lover and the Beloved, a relationship the Bahá'í writings return to again and again in their most lyrical passages.
In many spiritual traditions, the soul is what animates, what makes a living being truly alive rather than merely biological. To name God "my Soul" in that sense is to acknowledge that every spark of aliveness, every moment of genuine consciousness or love or longing, is itself a gift flowing from the divine source. Without that animating presence, there is nothing. This is not a frightening dependency; it is the most reassuring possible foundation. The ground of your being is not your own fragile effort, it is God.
The phrase also sits right beside two other deeply tender names in the same breath of the prayer: "my Beloved" and "my Faith." Together they form a cluster that is personal, relational, and trusting rather than formal or transactional. The worshipper is not reciting a list of divine attributes from a safe distance. They are speaking the way someone speaks to the person they love most, with a simplicity that only deep familiarity makes possible.
Calling on my Soul for healing
When illness or anguish strips away the roles and routines that usually give us our sense of self, something raw and essential is exposed. That exposed place, frightened, uncertain, sometimes barely holding on, is exactly where the name "my Soul" can land with extraordinary tenderness. To whisper or breathe these words in a moment of suffering is to remind yourself that God is not absent from that stripped-down interior place; God is, in a profound sense, its very life. You are not reaching across an enormous distance to find help. You are turning inward, and finding that the inward place is already inhabited by One who knows you completely.
Please do seek the care of qualified physicians and mental health professionals, this is not a substitution for competent medical attention, and the Bahá'í teachings are clear that physical illness calls for physical medicine working alongside spiritual healing. But the act of calling God "my Soul" in prayer can accompany that practical care in a way that steadies the whole person through uncertainty. No outcome can be guaranteed; healing is held in the wisdom of One who sees what we cannot see. What this name offers is not a promise about what will happen to the body, but an anchor for the spirit while whatever needs to happen unfolds.
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Living the Word
Applying my Soul in your life
A name of God is a virtue to grow into. Where is my Soul being asked of you right now, and how will you practice it? Keep a short note each time you return, and watch your own path with this name take shape over time. It stays on this device.
In the Bahá'í Writings
“God Is the Great Compassionate Physician Who Alone Gives True Healing October 19th All true healing comes from God! There are two causes for sickness, one is material, the other spiritual. If the sickness is of the body, a material remedy is needed, if of the soul, a spiritual remedy. If the heavenly benediction be upon us while we are being healed then only can we be made whole, for medicine is but the outward and visible means through which we obtain the heavenly healing. Unless the spirit be healed, the cure of the body is worth nothing. All is in the hands of God, and without Him there can be no health in us! There have been many men who have died at last of the very disease of which they have made a special study. Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastric malady. Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease. God is the great compassionate Physician who alone has the power to give true healing. All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power and independence.”
Read in full at bahai.org →“15.3O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer. 15.4O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. Acquiring Divine Virtues”
Read in full at bahai.org →“O handmaid of God! The prayers which were revealed to ask for healing apply both to physical and spiritual healing. Recite them, then, to heal both the soul and the body. If healing is right for the patient, it will certainly be granted; but for some ailing persons, healing would only be the cause of other ills, and therefore wisdom doth not permit an affirmative answer to the prayer. O handmaid of God! The power of the Holy Spirit healeth both physical and spiritual ailments. O handmaid of God! It is recorded in the Torah: And I will give you the valley of Achor for a door of hope. This valley of Achor is the city of ‘Akká, and whoso hath interpreted this otherwise is of those who know not.”
Read in full at bahai.org →Questions about my Soul
- Does calling God "my Soul" mean that we are God, or that God and humanity are the same?
- Not at all. This name expresses intimacy and utter dependence, not identity. The Bahá'í teachings consistently distinguish between the Creator and the created. Calling God "my Soul" in prayer is poetic and devotional language that points to how foundational and close God is to us, the way a soul animates a body, rather than a philosophical claim that the two are one and the same.
- Can the Long Healing Prayer help with mental and emotional suffering, or only physical illness?
- The Bahá'í teachings indicate that these prayers address both physical and spiritual healing, understood broadly. Mental and emotional suffering falls within the scope of what one might bring to this prayer. That said, qualified mental health professionals provide a form of care that prayer is not meant to replace, and seeking that help is entirely consistent with Bahá'í principles.
- Why does Bahá'u'lláh address God in such personal language in the Long Healing Prayer?
- Throughout the mystical and devotional writings of Bahá'u'lláh, the relationship between the soul and God is described in the language of love, intimate, yearning, and personal rather than merely legal or contractual. The Long Healing Prayer draws on this same register of loving nearness, inviting the person who recites it into a felt sense of relationship with the divine rather than a purely intellectual acknowledgment of God's power.
- If I pray this prayer and don't recover, does that mean something went wrong?
- Bahá'í guidance is clear that healing, while genuinely sought in prayer, is granted according to a wisdom that may not match our immediate understanding or wishes. Not recovering is not evidence that the prayer failed or that the person lacked faith. Holding prayer and medical care together, without attaching them to a guaranteed result, is the balanced approach the teachings encourage.
Listen to, recite, and reflect on the whole prayer, its more than one hundred names of God.
Hear the Long Healing Prayer