Too Many Keys

Too Many Keys
Let's see. You've got a key to your house. A key to your car. A key to your wife's car. A key to your office. A key to your briefcase. A key to the filing cabinet, one for each of the three suitcases, a spare key to someone else's house.
That doesn't include the dozen or so keys that unlock you have no idea what, sitting in a kitchen drawer or in a container in the workshop or somewhere else.
What do we need so many keys for, anyway? Well, there are lots of parts of our lives we need access to, and we need keys to open them up. If we want to get into our house, we need a key - to the front door and back door, at least. We can't start our car without a key.
Yeah, but why do we need keys to begin with? That answer's obvious, right? We have to lock things up and lock things out to protect ourselves. If we couldn't lock our cars, they might get stolen. If we couldn't lock our houses, we might get robbed (G-d forbid). If we couldn't lock our offices, our competitors might learn our secrets.
But even if don't have to worry about theft, we need locks for more than protection. We need them for privacy. We lock the door to our house so that guests first need our permission to enter. We control who comes into our spaces - our family space, our work space, our private space - by locking everyone out.
We have the key that lets someone into our lives. So giving someone a key is more than a sign of trust. It's the ultimate act of trust.
The thing is, we have to know which keys are still useful, and who to give them to.
The same is true of our spiritual lives. We have many "spaces" and each has its own door. There's the "space" for tzedeka (charity), the "space"for prayer, the "space" for Torah study, etc. And each one has its key.
But sometimes we change the locks. The amount of tzedeka we were able to give last year - our "space" for tzedeka - has changed, has grown. But if we try to use the same old "key," we won't open the right door. The same applies to prayer, to Torah study, to any other mitzva (commandment).
But how do we know when we're using the wrong key? How do we know if we have "too many keys" - keys that are useless duplicates, keys to doors we no longer need, keys to spaces we've grown out of?
Sometimes we can tell by trial and error. Sometimes, though, we need someone else to tell us: this "key" isn't good any more. Sometimes we need someone to give us a new key, the key to our new spiritual office, our new spiritual house.
That's the someone we trust with the master key - the key to our spiritual door. And that, in part, is why Jewish teachings encourage us- "acquire for yourself a Rav," why the Lubavitcher Rebbe has urged everyone to have a "mashpia" - a friend or mentor or guide, someone you trust, who's close to you, who has your best interest at heart, and can give you sound spiritual advise.
Someone who knows which key you should use, and if you've trying to open the right doors, if, in a sense, you have too few keys, too many keys - or just the right amount of keys to the right doors.