Acharya Prashant explains that we do not just get excited about anything; we get excited only about that which we have taught ourselves to get excited about. Therefore, excitement is always a furtherance of existing patterns. For example, the body is born sexual, with the programming that certain things will be titillating and certain organs and zones will be erogenous. You already know what will be exciting. Similarly, if you have been conditioned to be a particular way, such as a thoroughbred Catholic, Brahmin, or Muslim, the way itself decides what you find exciting. It is already certain what is going to excite you. Excitement is just a furtherance of one's biological or socially acquired patterns. In contrast, becoming calm is something very different. You cannot know what is going to becalm you; you can only know what will trouble you. If you already know what is going to soothe you, then you are not being soothed; you are just being given a predetermined relief. This is not real peace but just a game of patterns. Excitement and relief are just the pulsation of patterns. Real calmness is when the patterns break down, when the thing that used to throb and pulsate is no more. Now, who is there to get excited? Who is there to benefit from the relief? The entire market knows what will excite you, and because they know this in advance, they are able to enslave you. If someone knows what will excite you, they can control you. A true friend is one who takes away from you that which makes you excitable. He doesn't merely take away excitement; he takes away excitability itself. That within you which used to get stimulated is itself dissolved or demolished. That is the work of the friend.
