Q: Is the desire for spiritual contact a desire for pleasure?
A: If the desire is there, there is nothing more to work on. It means that the Creator Himself is inviting you to meet Him.
But if there is no desire for contact with the Creator, you must search for that contact. If you already have a sensation of the contact, then you already have a desire for Him. Now, search for the additional desire to unite with Him.
If you are waiting for the desire to come to you, it will not happen by itself. Instead, you will get pain and suffering from Above to make you start asking questions and search for that aim. If you have that aim, Baal HaSulam writes that the Creator Himself gives us the desire for Him, and invites us to draw near. Then comes the time when we must make an effort in order to match the desire of the Creator.
There is only the Creator, the creature, and the contact between them in the world - nothing else! It is precisely when we are in pain that we can turn that suffering, whether individual, national or global into pleasure. The pain is given to us for one purpose only – to contact the Creator through it, thus turning it to pleasure.
If we relate to our pain correctly, we will see that all those torments are simply a reason for us to ascend spiritually, and then the entire world will be at our feet.