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Bottom looks upwards to an ideal, let's call it God. It's an idealistic stance. It's the infinite as the goal and thus a limitless source of energy. It's often less egoic in theory, but more egoic in practice.

From an internal viewpoint, any sort of striving takes on one of these two flavors. In total there are 4 though since they have corresponding 'twisted' views.

From Bottom's POV, Top looks authoritarian and oppressive. Bullies and gold hoarding dragons. From Top's POV, Bottom looks atrocious. Wimps who won't take anything into their own hands. Demand equal pay for clearly inferior output.

These 'demonic' interpretations, Malevolent Giant, and Fiendish Imp, don't actually exist. From the Giant and the Imps perspective they see each other as Protector and Missionary.

Seeing "Reality" often means seeing the world in a more simple manner. Instead of attributing demonic interpretations, we trust that the "Other" has access to these same "Pure" feelings that we have. See No Evil By Seeing Self in Other.

(Or. See evil in others and thus use it as a clue to vanquish the evil in yourself.)

To increase empathy you have to have to be able to utilize both of these temperaments. People have a preference though. Top is a sadistic pleasure while Bottom is a masochistic pleasure. If you only enjoy one type of pleasure, you're missing out on half of the flavor of life.

It's similar to the saying that you should have a Mentor as well as a Mentee throughout your life. As you grow, there should always be someone to whom you look up to, as well as someone who looks up to you. 3 dots on the straight-and-narrow.

The Eternal Student sees self as Student of God. The Incumbent Bully sees self as Great Protector. What the student lacks is the courage to lead, to judge and rank, and become teacher. What the teacher lacks is courage to become a student again, to feel stupid, to make mistakes.

Once you can enjoy going up as well as going down, you can enjoy the river of life more easily. Left or Right, it doesn't matter, there's no "right" direction to where the river is going, it's just Being a Fucking River.

You can tell by my initial descriptions of Top/Bottom that I have a bias towards Bottom. E.g. I used negative terms like 'bully' to describe "Top".

In life this manifests as an avoidance of direct conflict, even when I know I'm right. My sadism shadow manifests as I watch the "stupid" person "walk into a pole" and I chuckle to myself.

The most sadistic acts tend to source from the Bottom temperament. e.g. A purity driven idealist cleansing the 'impure'. The most masochistic acts tend to source from the Top temperament. e.g. a craftsman refusing to modernize despite its economic benefits.

For Bottom to learn Top you have to squint your eyes of the bully and see how they seem themselves as a Judge/Critic. It's hard to empathize precisely because the self-deception is obvious to you from the external perspective.

Vice versa, Top has to squint and imagine that Bottom really does feel like it has learned something new and Godlike. Externally you can see that it's just Another New Shiny, but true empathy means really seeing that sort of Aliveness they're feeling.

Most 'atheists' cannot or will not, even for a second, try to imagine what believing in God feels like. It feels like trying to imagine the perspective from an insane or retarded person. It's not that crazy... It's similar to the belief of believing in Santa Claus.

The "Being Laughed at In Front of the Class For Believing in Something" wound drives deep into our soul. It causes us to judge those who bring "The Gift of Light" as either charlatans or naive children.

From Top's perspective, stripping away the innocence of belief in Santa Claus is necessary because You Need to Learn to Defend Your Family Against Wolves. From Bottom's perspective, the Lord of Light Jesuhallah Shangdi will protect against the wolves.

One protects the Sacred Spear and passes it down from generation to generation. One tinkers and toys around creates a Gun. Then passes the Golden Gun down from generation to generation. Until one tinkers around and creates ....

For most of the more 'plugged' in type, we're trying to create a new Sacred Thingy because we've been "empowered" to See Through the Sacred.

To ELI5: Too much porn made reality boring. Reality has started dying and crying from too much neglect and will continue to cry louder and louder until we unplug ourselves from our VR worlds and tend to the Garden.

"Where is the garden of eden?" "Here." "But this is just dirt. I want something like yours." "Yeah but that's my garden of eden, this is yours." "I want that one though." "No see, this is yours, it came w/ you when you were born." "Yeah but I want yours."

"You can't swap gardens, they're a manifestation of your soul." "Can't I just buy one." "No you idiot, tend to your garden." "But it's harrrddd workkkkkk" "Fuck you" "No Fuck you. <burns down the garden>"

<Many years later after centuries of bloody battles fought over patches of land.> "No need to fight and bleed over Dirt. Your gardens of eden are within you. Just look within you. Water with love, not with blood." "Kill that lunatic!"

The lunatic dies, but not before spreading the gospel of The Epic Gardener's Guide to Growing Love on Arid Dirt. (Or EGG GLAD for short.)

The thing about both the angelic interpretation and the demonic one is that neither of them are true. it's existence in consciousness MUST take on one of them as its form. Like wave/particle duality.

The demonic interpretation feels easier not because it is more "Real", but because we use our "Right" hand more often than our "Left". It's just as possible to cast everyone in an angelic light if you put in the effort to learn the trick

It's easy just like our first language is easy. We didn't have to learn it. Social osmosis similarly aligns our "handedness" at pointing out Bad Guys from Good Guys.

Much of the "Love your neighbor" spiel doesn't actually account for this difficulty. It's the same difficulty as learning a foreign language, or piano, or flying a plane.

Being able to say "Ni Hao" or "Hola" doesn't mean you know chinese or spanish. You have to be able to "think" within the angelic framework, not just acknowledge its existence with a cheap trick.