Why is the negative polarity clever?

[Ray711]

So what about a monk who spends their life in solitude on a hill?
Is that service to self? Or others?

It would depend both on the monk's reason for seeking solitude, and the general perceptions and feelings he/she has towards other people. Ra explains this exact situation here:

80.11 Questioner: Could I say, then, that implicit in the process of becoming adept is the possible partial polarization towards service to self because simply the adept becomes disassociated with many of his kind or like in the particular density which he inhabits?

Ra: I am Ra. This is likely to occur. The apparent happening is disassociation whether the truth is service to self and thus true disassociation from other-selves or service to others and thus true association with the heart of all other-selves and disassociation only from the illusory husks which prevent the adept from correctly perceiving the self and other-self as one.

80.12 Questioner: Then you say that this effect of disassociation on the service-to-others adept is a stumbling block or slowing process in reaching that goal which he aspires to? Is this correct?

Ra: I am Ra. This is incorrect. This disassociation from the miasma of illusion and misrepresentation of each and every distortion is a quite necessary portion of an adept’s path. It may be seen by others to be unfortunate.

In regards to the concepts of radiance and absorption, I think it's incorrect to consider that anything that the self receives from others is an act of absorption in the negative sense. Knowing how to receive that which others give freely to us is an important part of the STO path, as stated by Ra and other metaphysical beings. True absorption in the negative sense is to deliberately manipulate and control others, taking from them what they would not give to us out of their own free will. This is much more subtle than it seems, though, and it doesn't even have to involve any overt actions against other people. Merely judging and talking badly about somebody behind their backs entails this kind of negative absorption. Even if it happens only in our minds, we are picturing them as being wrong, and ourselves as a kind of authority that is implied to be superior to the other person. This gives us an ego boost by establishing this sort of hierarchy where they are inferior and we are better.