In the context of a person’s journey to self-improvement, there are, broadly speaking, two approaches to repentance.
These are reflected in how one regards the evils he committed in his past.
The first approach, that which forms the most basic and core element in the repentance process, is a person’s dissociation from the past and the evil acts he perpetrated.
The second approach involves making an active change in the sinful deeds he performed, in an effort to impart new meaning to them.
The first approach is relatively simple, attainable by any person and for any evil action he may have committed.
In this approach, one disentangles himself from the ramifications of the particular deed, escaping from the vicious cycle of sin and evil by taking ownership of those actions and resolving to abandon them completely.
To be sure, the damage wrought by his actions woefully remains within existence, in desperate need of repair; he merely breaks his connection with it.
This is, in a sense, how a person relates to the impure kelippot:
He neither repairs them nor transforms them into good, but only disconnects himself from them.
The 365 prohibitions provide the framework within which this approach can operate.
They represent those actions one must avoid, how to contain them, and how to sever their lifeline, banishing them from existence.
The second approach to repentance, exceedingly rare and far more difficult than the first, is one in which a person succeeds in changing the meaning of his past actions.
To undertake this task one must relate to the evil not merely in a passive manner, i.e., by ceasing that action, but by actively elevating and rectifying the evil with a holy action.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz