Q: I’ve realized how selfish I am to people around me. It is terrible! I dream about changing. Is this the right request; is that the prayer that He awaits from me? After all, I want to correct my relationship with people, not with Him.
A: You describe your situation correctly and analyze it well. You’re right. Now you are being shown that one of your attributes is bad, but you are not yet shown how it feels compared to the qualities of the Creator.
The Creator is still hidden from you, and you still don’t feel Him. But it is through that comparison, through the gradual discovery of your negative attributes, that you’ll begin to feel the Creator as something opposite to your own nature on the one hand, and as something near, soft and kind to you, on the other.
Then you’ll understand the principle of “as far as light excelleth darkness” (Ecclesiastes 2, 13). We are all vessels, and therefore can only understand the Light as something opposite to us, or else we would feel it as pleasure and not as another attribute.