he shined the light through the window
I'd say he shone the light through the window. Nonetheless - He shined his shoes while the sun shone.

Brits would get a pay-rise. We wouldn't really talk about someone raising our pay, but we definitely wouldn't talk about someone rising our pay (we'd probably just say "The boss gave us a pay-rise").

We use self-raising flour to bake cakes. This is apparently distinct from the Zildian as well as the OverThePondian "self-rising" flour (can't remember if it was Tweedledum or Tweedledee that mentioned this ). A cake would rise. Again, we'd rarely - if ever - talk about someone raising it, but we'd never talk about someone rising it.

Pick a different example. A flag is raised. If there were some device that would make the flag raise automatically on the right occasions, it would be a self-raising flag. We could noun the event of the flag rising by calling it a flag-rise, taking sunrise as the model.

However, could it be significant that the self-raising flag hasn't been invented yet, whereas the sun is always self-raising?