Solstice [from Latin sol sun + stit stand still]

The two points in the ecliptic at which the sun is farthest from the equator, north or south; so called because the sun halts and turns back on its northerly or southerly course. These points are in the first degree of Cancer and Capricorn respectively -- the summer and winter solstices; south of the equator the summer solstice occurs when the sun is south of the equator and in Capricorn, and the winter solstice when the sun is north of the equator and in Cancer; north of the equator the summer solstice occurs when the sun is north of the equator and in Cancer, and the winter solstice when the sun is south of the equator and in Capricorn. The solstitial points, like the equinoctial points, retrograde and complete their circle round the ecliptic in a precessional year of 25,920 years.

The solstices and equinoxes mark the four corners of the esoteric year, each associated with particular psychospiritual events in the initiation cycle. The winter solstice is associated with the birth of the inner Christ or Buddha; the summer solstice with the great renunciation of personal progress made by those of the hierarchy of compassion.

(See also: Solstice, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Buddhahood

(Jpn.: bukkai)

The state of awakening that a Buddha has attained. The ultimate goal of Buddhist practice and the highest of the Ten Worlds. The word enlightenment is often used synonymously with Buddhahood. Buddhahood is regarded as a state of perfect freedom, in which one is awakened to the eternal and ultimate truth that is the reality of all things. This supreme state of life is characterized by boundless wisdom and infinite compassion. The Lotus Sutra reveals that Buddhahood is a potential in the lives of all beings.

See: attainment of Buddhahood

(See also: Buddhahood, Enlightenment, Buddhism Enlightenment, Buddhism Enlightenment Dictionary)

Love

For most of us, love is a full-time obsession . We are concerned about the love of our parents, children, co-workers, friends, and many, many others. There is nothing more important to our emotional, psychological, or spiritual well-being than love. It is a vital part of any growth process. We need to have a healthy dose of self-love so that we can, in turn, love the world. Dreams may be filled with images of love, friendship, compassion, and lust. In the end, it is all about acceptance and belonging. To be loved is to feel accepted and have a sense of belonging. In our dreams we may be trying to figure out this mystery called love. The dream may be wish-fulfilling or compensatory in nature. It may be spiritual or practical, but always deals with a significant part of our psyche or our daily lives.

Source: Dream Lover Incorporated, http://www.dreamloverinc.com

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Love, Meaning of Dreams about Love, Dream Interpretation Love)

PISCES - Fishes; twelfth sign of the zodiac; of the watery element; ruler Neptune; keywords: sympathy, compassion, gentle energy. (NAD)

(See also: PISCES, Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Mouse:

1. In British mythology, the mouse is usually portrayed as weak and timid, but blessed with compensatory traits of intelligence, compassion, and resourcefulness. Dreaming of a mouse, therefore, portends a situation in which the dreamer will be able to turn a weakness into a strength, a disadvantage into an advantage - and thus escape any negative consequences.

2. Being frightened by a mouse signifies social embarrassment coming up, and if the dreamer wants to avoid it, he or she can look to other symbols in the dream.

3. Mice scurrying around freely, wreaking havoc in their surroundings, indicate family squabbles ahead.

4. Seeing a mouse being chased by a cat is a warning not to let others interfere in your affairs.

Source: Astrocenter, http://astrocenter.astrology.msn.com/msn/DreamDictionary.aspx

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Mouse, Meaning of Dreams about Mouse, Dream Interpretation Mouse)

Titiksha titiksa (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root tij to urge, incite to action, be active in endurance or patience]

Patience, resignation, endurance; not mere passive resignation, but an active attitude of patience in supporting the events of life. Mystically, the fifth state of raja yoga -- "one of supreme indifference; submission, if necessary, to what is called 'pleasures and pains for all,' but deriving neither pleasure nor pain from such submission -- in short, the becoming physically, mentally, and morally indifferent and insensible to either pleasure or pain" (VS 93). The meaning however is not of a cold, heartless, impassive attitude towards the sufferings of others, but an active positive attitude, so far as one's individual pleasures or pains are considered, but likewise involving an active attitude of compassion for the tribulations and sufferings of others. The same thought is involved in the title Diamond-heart, given to adepts: as hard and indifferent to one's own sorrows as the diamond is hard and enduring, yet like the diamond reflecting in its facets as in mirrors the sufferings and sorrows of all around.

Also personified as a goddess, the wife of Dharma (divine law) and daughter of Daksha.

(See also: Titiksha, titiksa, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Characteristics of Kapha

A thick, broad, well-developed frame and large, long limbs go well with a pleasant, deep and resonant voice with low, slow, rhythmic speech. The skin is usually thick, oily, pale or white and cold. Plentiful, thick, wavy, lusterous and generally brown hair is set on a large, rounded and full face. The neck is solid, with a near tree-trunk quality. A large, rounded nose and large, attractive, blue or light brown in color eyes are found in a mouth that is large with big, full lips. Teeth too are big and white and set in strong gums.

Caring * Centeredness * Compassion * Contentment * Faith * Fulfillment * Groundedness * Patience * Sense of being nourished * Stability * Support * Tenderness

Kapha predominated people are calm, steady, considerate - stable, patient personalities they are slow to anger. Not easily provoked, once angry they do not calm down easily. They are honourable, true to their word and avoid lies. Loyal, forgiving and understanding, they can be lethargic, even lazy, if not driven by others. Learning may be slow but memory will be strong. Excellent in logical analysis, they take time before reaching conclusions. Long hours of deep sleep and a strong, enduring sex drive come naturally. While they do save money, it does get spent on food. And there can at times be an element of dullness, given that a kapha mind is usually too content to seek fresh mental stimulation.

Decreased quantities of warm food.Pungent, bitter and astringent tastes.To be taken earlier than 10 am and not later than 6 pm. Healthy Kapha types should observe fast one day per week.

Oil Massage

With stimulating oils such as punarnavadi oil and srigopal oil.

Exercise

Regular and vigorous.

Herbal Dietary supplements

Guggul, sitopladi churan, trikatu, chyavanprash, Kapha Tea.

Factors that increase kapha

1.    Exposure to cold , eating too much sweet ,meat ,fats, cheese, milk, ice cream, yogurt, fried food, excessive use of salt. Excessive intake of water

2.    Taking naps after meals.

3.    Doing nothing .Sedative and tranquilizers.

4.    Doubts, greed, and possessiveness.

5.    Lack of comapation

(See also: KAPHA, Ayurveda, Ayurvedic Dictionary, Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Dream Interpretation Blue

Blue has always something to do with intellectual and spiritual events, insights, experiences, and mental processes. It is opposite of the emotional "red", because it is "cool" and "analytical". A soft gentle blue is typically female colour. Blue is a symbol of emotional contentment that we all would like to attain. It indicates that you live wisely and with compassion. Blue stands for intellectual goals and insight, faith, and spiritual maturity.

Source: Dream-Land, http://www.dream-land.info

(See also: Dream Archives, Meaning of Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Dream Dictionary, Dream Dictionary - Blue, Meaning of Dreams about Blue, Dream Interpretation Blue)

Buddhism: Basic Buddhist Dictionary

A basic dictionary of Buddhism terms. Please note that all words in grey like " Buddhism " are links to an archive with related articles.

A Welsh Myth Concordance

The following concordance is based on the four branches of the Welsh "Mabinogi", as retold in the four books by Evangeline Walton: "Prince of Annwn", "The Children of Llyr", "The Song of Rhiannon", and "The Island of the Mighty".

Pisces: The best quality of Pisces is sympathy. The worst quality is hypersensitivity. A key phrase is “I believe.” The Pisces personality is dreamy and idealistic. You like to float in an ocean of sensitivity, relating to your own feelings and the feelings of others in a direct way. You are the classic romantics, wanting to indulge the senses. You sometimes appear to be vague.

Mentally Pisceans are prudent people, balancing the emotional side with the capacity to worry about details. Because your strength lies in the feeling realm, you may feel inferior in the mental realm. It is important to remember that the capacity for sound judgment lies as much in feelings as in logic. Pisces uses psychic senses to make decisions, and may need to learn how to back up these impressions with facts.

Pisces mirrors the environment.You can appear very different in different situations, and you can be responsive to the needs of others. More than that, you can inspire other people through your own emotional strength. You may be able to see into the future, but this very ability takes you out of the present, and therefore may keep you from completing projects.

Pisces is a peaceful sign. You often are retiring, preferring to be on the edge of things watching than to be in the middle of the action. You tend to worry and may feel slighted by others. You believe what you feel.

The great strength of Pisces lies in the ability to respond in two worlds –the world of practical social dealings and the internal world of mystical experience. You may need to develop the strengths of planets in other signs to get you around in the day-to-day world, but you are well-equipped to understand the realm of spirit. Your adaptability usually gets you what you need on the material side, even while you have your minds on Utopian quests. Compassion can be one of your strongest qualities.

(See also: Pisces, Magic, Shamanism, Paganism, Wicca)

Kundalini Dictionary

Dictionary over terms related to kundalini and kundalini awakening. Please note that words in grey like " Kundalini " are links to archives with related articles.

Hesed (Hesedh) or Chesed (Hebrew) Love, kindness; the fourth Sephirah, Mercy, Love, or Compassion, also called Gedulah (greatness, magnificence), emanated from the three preceding Sephiroth or first triad. Hesed is regarded as an active masculine potency, the second in the right pillar of the Sephirothal Tree.

Its Divine Name is 'El (the mighty); in the Angelic Order it is represented as the Hashmaim (the scintillating flames), as of polished or burnished brass. In its application to the human body, regarded as the right arm, giving strength; while in its application to the seven globes of our planetary chain it corresponds to globe G. From this Sephiroth is emanated the fifth, Geburah.

(See also: Hesed, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Avaivartika (Sanskrit) (from a not + vi-vrit to turn around, revolve)

Non-revolving, nontransmigrating; in the case of a reimbodying entity, one who is advanced so far on the evolutionary path that he is no longer enslaved by, or enchained in, the whirling waves of samsara. Hence also translated "one who does not revolve any more," applied to seventh round human beings, and therefore strictly referable to one who has reached nirvana. Also applied to every buddha "who turns no more back; who goes straight to Nirvana" (TG 44), for whether nirvana is entered as in the case of the Pratyeka Buddhas, or whether the avaivartika renounces that lofty state and remains in the nirmanakaya as a Buddha of Compassion, both classes of buddhas have passed beyond the necessity of "revolving" any more in this round.

(See also: Avaivartika, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Pratyeka Buddha (Sanskrit) [from prati towards, for + eka one]

Each one for himself; exalted and in one sense holy beings who crave spiritual enlightenment for themselves alone. They "are those Bodhisattvas who strive after and often reach the Dharmakaya robe after a series of lives. Caring nothing for the woes of mankind or to help it, but only for this own bliss, they enter Nirvana and -- disappear from the sight and the hearts of men. In Northern Buddhism a 'Pratyeka Buddha' is a synonym of spiritual Selfishness"; "He, who becomes Pratyeka-Buddha, makes his obeisance but to his Self" (VS 86, 43).

They achieve nirvana automatically as it were, and leave the world in its misery behind. Though exalted, nevertheless they do not rank with the unutterable sublimity, wisdom, and pity of the Buddhas of Compassion.

"The Pratyeka Buddha is a degree which belongs exclusively to the Yogacharya school, yet it is only one of high intellectual development with no true spirituality. It is the dead-letter of the Yoga laws, in which intellect and comprehension play the greatest part, added to the strict carrying out of the rules of the inner development. It is one of the three paths to Nirvana, and the lowest, in which a Yogi -- 'without teacher and without saving others' -- by the mere force of will and technical observances, attains to a kind of nominal Buddhaship individually; doing no good to anyone, but working selfishly for his own salvation and himself alone.

The Pratyekas are respected outwardly but are despised inwardly by those of keen or spiritual appreciation. A Pratyeka is generally compared to a 'Khadga' or solitary rhinoceros and called Ekashringa Rishi, a selfish solitary Rishi (or saint)" (TG 261).

(See also: Pratyeka Buddha, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Leela:

Leela: (Lila): He plays on the stage that has no boundaries, His movements and activities. (BV-1), (RRV-1), Divine activities; so shaped that they suit the time, the person, the aspiration and the compassion which cause each shower of Grace (BV-35), (BV-40). The sport and pastimes, the adventures of the Lord.

(See also: Leela, Hinduism, Hinduism Dictionary, Sanskrit Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul)

grace: "Benevolence, love, giving," from the Latin gratia, "favor, goodwill."

God's power of revealment, anugraha shakti ("kindness, showing favor"), by which souls are awakened to their true, Divine nature.

Grace in the unripe stages of the spiritual journey is experienced by the devotee as receiving gifts or boons, often unbidden, from God. The mature soul finds himself surrounded by grace. He sees all of God's actions as grace, whether they be seemingly pleasant and helpful or not. For him, his very love of God, the power to meditate or worship, and the spiritual urge which drives his life are entirely and obviously God's grace, a divine endowment, an intercession, unrelated to any deed or action he did or could perform.

In Saiva Siddhanta, it is grace that awakens the love of God within the devotee, softens the intellect and inaugurates the quest for Self Realization. It descends when the soul has reached a certain level of maturity, and often comes in the form of a spiritual initiation, called shaktipata, from a satguru.

Grace is not only the force of illumination or revealment. It also includes Siva's other four powers - creation, preservation, destruction and concealment - through which He provides the world of experience and limits the soul's consciousness so that it may evolve.

More broadly, grace is God's ever-flowing love and compassion, karuna, also known as kripa ("tenderness, compassion") and prasada (literally, "clearness, purity").

To whom is God's grace given? Can it be earned? Two famous analogies, that of the monkey (markata) and that of the cat (marjara) express two classical viewpoints on salvation and grace.

• The markata school, perhaps represented more fully by the Vedas, asserts that the soul must cling to God like a monkey clings to its mother and thus participate in its "salvation."
• The marjara school, which better reflects the position of the Agamas, says that the soul must be like a young kitten, totally dependent on its mother's will, picked up in her mouth by the scruff of the neck and carried here and there. This crucial state of loving surrender is called prapatti.

See: anugraha shakti, prapatti, shaktipata, tirodhana shakti.

(See also: Grace, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition ofManasaputra (Manasaputras) :

Manasaputra (Manasaputras)

(Sanskrit) This is a compound word: manas, "mind," putra, "son"  - "sons of mind." The teaching is that there exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky sometimes called the Hierarchy of Mercy or of Pity. This is the light side of nature as contrasted with its matter side or shadow side, its night side. It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came those semi-divine entities at about the middle period of the third root-race of this round, who incarnated in the semi-conscious, quasi-senseless men of that period.

These advanced entities are otherwise known as the solar lhas as the Tibetans call them, the solar spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third root-race thus sacrificed themselves in order to give us intellectual light  - incarnating in those senseless psychophysical shells in order to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spiritray that we do; yet we, more strictly speaking, were those halfunconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being.

This, our "awakening," was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of the manasaputras, or the sons of mind or light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our evolution by merely "natural" causes, but it would have been slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense love, though, indeed, acting under karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and understanding. From that time we ourselves became "sons of the gods," the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful, leading us inwards back to our spiritual home.

The manasaputras are our higher natures and, paradoxical as it is, are more largely evolved beings than we are. They were the spiritual entities who "quickened" our personal egos, which were thus evolved into self-consciousness, relatively small though that yet be. One, and yet many! As you can light an infinite number of candles from one lighted candle, so from a spark of consciousness can you quicken and enliven innumerable other consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep or latent in the life-atoms.

These manasaputras, children of mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened in us the manas-manas of our manas septenary, because they themselves are typically manasic in their essential characteristic or svabhava. Their own essential or manasic vibrations, so to say, could cause that essence of manas in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a musical note will cause sympathetic response in something like it, a similar note in other things. (See also Agnishvattas)

See also: Manasaputra (Manasaputras) , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

spiritual unfoldment: Adhyatma vikasa.

The unfoldment of the spirit, the inherent, divine soul of man. The very gradual expansion of consciousness as kundalini shakti slowly rises through the sushumna.

The term spiritual unfoldment indicates this slow, imperceptible process, likened to a lotus flower's emerging from bud to effulgent beauty. Contrasted with development, which implies intellectual study; or growth, which implies character building and sadhana.

Sound intellect and good character are the foundation for spiritual unfoldment, but they are not the unfoldment itself. When philosophical training and sadhana is complete, the kundalini rises safely and imperceptively, without jerks, twitches, tears or hot flashes. Brings greater willpower, compassion and perceptive qualities.

See: adhyatma vikasa, kundalini, kundalini, awakening, liberation, pada, sadhana, sadhana marga, San Marga, tapas.

(See also: Spiritual unfoldment, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

karunya: (Sanskrit) "Compassion, kindness, love." In Saivism, an alternate term for Siva's revealing grace, anugraha shakti.

See: anugraha shakti, grace.

(See also: Karunya, Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)