What I would submit is that this reaction, being in large measure physiological, is potentially under our conscious control. You can learn to secrete the hormones, to feel the feelings, to relax the muscles, that are similar to the feeling of a happy baby.
Consider the Buddhist practice of loving kindness (karuna, if memory serves). It is a flow outward. But to do it properly, it must first be directs INWARDLY, correct? You cannot hate yourself and love others, truly. That is not how it works.
In my own case, my mother may as well have been schizoid. I have struggled with the term, but by all accounts I cried a lot, and got hit a lot when I was 2 and 3. Like many, I missed that early experience with bonding. According to traditional theory, I’m screwed. But I don’t accept traditional theory. Fuck limitations set by others, especially so-called “experts”.
Despite not having been nurtured myself, by my mother or wife, I was very loving with my children. One of my kids once told me “you look like my father, but you’re really my mother” (I’m “practically a breast”: name the movie).
Where did that come from? I don’t know. But I can say that the practice of loving is comforting for the one doing it. Empirically, in my own experience, love does not have to come first to you for you to offer it to others.
This means we control our own experience.
This is very important, because what I see, looking at our cultural landscape, is a lack of love. See that kid with the “love” t-shirt on? His mother is probably a clinical narcissist. That is why he smokes pot and listens to escapist, vapid music. Many if not most hippies were and remain functional narcissists. As I once heard it put, “There was a lot of loving back then, but not much love.”
Consider these young women who go down to Florida on spring break and fuck 3 guys, probably in what most would consider undignified circumstances. Do they become good mothers? Some, yes. Many, no. Where did they get the love, and/or how did they decide to love anyway? I think they marry some good looking rich kid, who cheats on them. These are gross generalizations of course, but I think have some truth in them.
The essence of spirituality–and I think I’ve said this–is first and foremost the ability to comfort yourself in difficult circumstances, and thus to have emotional reserves for others even in the most trying of circumstances. It is not about mystical experiences, except to the extent they are USEFUL in this task. What was miraculous about early Christians was the equinimity with which they met often very horrible fates.
Have to run. Hopefully this is useful for someone.