Uprooting Negative Middos

Reuven did teshuva, so why did he still lose the kehuna and the kingship? And why does Yaakov's rebuke of Reuven and of Shimon and Levi point to a character flaw, "unstable as water" and "in their anger," and not to the act itself? Rabbi Asaf Prisman brings a difficult piece from Rav Eliyahu Lopian's Lev Eliyahu on Parshas Vayechi. Why do some sins weigh more than others? One case of two counterfeiters, caught on the same day and sentenced very differently, makes the point. It also asks what we are working on when we do teshuva.