Birds and Swallows

Many who leave the church tout the power of their new intellectual freedom by
saying things like "I felt the spirit watching Disney's Frozen today," trying to
mock those who identify strong emotion as the touch of the Holy Ghost. For them, no
emotion is from the spirit, and therefore cognitive dissonance requires them to
abandon even their own former witnesses, and dilute them whenever possible by
identifying false-positive "spiritual" experiences in an effort to prove their
current correctness.
Conversely, many who are in the church likewise express their piety by attributing
every emotion to a spiritual prompting, looking for meaning in the slightest twinge
of feeling. For them, every emotion must have a divine connection, no matter how
strained and they fall again and again into the post hoc fallacy, identifying bad
news from that evening with the 'bad feeling' from that morning, saying "Ah. So
that's what that feeling was all about."
Both positions suffer from the same flawed perspective of what it is to be touched
by the Holy Ghost - that one certain emotion or experience like peace or frission
or foreboding or chills is always from the Holy Ghost.
All swallows are birds but not all birds are swallows. I think that we often
confuse birds with swallows when it comes to the spirit and how it feels to be
visited by him.
Sometimes a feeling is just a feeling.
But, YES, Sometimes the spirit can and does use our feelings to get our attention.
I daresay that most of us could look back at our lives and see at least a couple
moments where it would be reasonable to say "yes, that seems to have been spiritual
in nature."
Yet at other times, we feel nothing while being acted upon by the spirit.
Stories of feeling nothing

For example, I remember once giving a blessing and feeling nothing special, as well
as absolutely ruining the words and phrases (it was in another language that I
hadn't a good grasp of.) I felt ashamed at my language blunders and quickly left
the room when I had finished. Yet the next day, I was told that I had recited
portions of this person's patriarchal blessing to her during my blessing, using
language patterns that were so advanced I, in my linguistic immaturity, had
mistaken them for gobbledygook. There had been no "feeling" but there is no denying
that the spirit was in control, as I had prayed and hoped for him to be.
One of the turning points of my life was when I was sitting in the back of the
chapel preparing a sunday school lesson as sacrament meeting was about to begin.
The bishop approached and said, with complete sincerity, something like "Woah,
there is a lot of spiritual power back here!" I remember saying "really?" because I
had felt nothing. I had been praying and studying and trying hard to get spiritual
guidance on the lesson, but had felt nothing. The bishop reassured me and said
"yeah, there's a really strong feeling here. I can tell you've been preparing
hard." His kind words gave me the confidence I needed to feel that I was capable of
bringing the spirit to a lesson - something I had doubted.
Sometimes we don't pay attention. For example, I remember taking a missionary prep
class. I zoned out as the missionaries gave us their example "first discussion."
They shared the story of the first vision and, having heard it before, I didn't
really pay attention. However, at the conclusion of the first vision story a
missionary looked right at me, of all people in the class, and said "onewatt, how
do you feel right now?" I was a little surprised, and annoyed because I didn't feel
anything but bored. However, wanting to be honest in my response, I paused and
genuinely examined my feelings. To my surprise I felt a deep, underlying layer of
peace - something I didn't expect at all and just hadn't noticed. I said,
completely honestly, "I feel peace." The missionary said, "that feeling comes from
the spirit witnessing that this is true." He was right.
So what does the Holy Ghost feel like?
But I personally believe the sensation of the spirit is something else - not an
emotion. Emotions like peace, love, serenity, frission, excitement, and so on -
those are just emotions. The spirit can trigger them within us if we're not paying
enough attention, or if we're not yet able to detect his presence without such
stimuli. They can also be triggered or even turned off by changes to our bodies, so
it makes no sense to say "that's the spirit." In my opinion, the sensation of the
Holy Ghost is something altogether different.
The crazy thing is that once you experience it, you start to recognize others who
have "been there." It shows up in words they use, testimonies they share, and how
they choose to describe certain events in their lives. Even in virtual environments
like reddit you notice certain words or phrases that belie a shared experience that
can't quite be described in a satisfactory way. Because you can't describe it. It
just doesn't happen. In my opinion, this is what Elder Packer was talking about in
his analogy about the taste of salt. The sensation of the Holy Ghost is an
experiential knowledge and can not be transferred via language.
There was a young man at testimony meeting last month who got up and spoke and
tried his best to describe something that had clearly been outside the realm of his
experience to that point in his life. He couldn't find words that worked, and
settled on making big gestures and trying phrases like "wash over me" and "like
fire" and "unbelievable." For him, the Holy Ghost had suddenly become far more than
the "good feelings" he had been taught in primary.
As far as I can tell this kind of encounter with the Holy Ghost is quite rare. Like
once in a lifetime rare. For most of us the spirit is identified not by a unique
feeling, but by the results of the presence of the spirit. For example, a sudden
understanding, an outpouring of knowledge, an impression to act, or a sensation of
light is as close as we get to it most days.
For example, when I was considering a mission I watched general conference all
alone. I was already 23, and I thought there was no point in me going. So I told
myself "All right, if one of the prophets gets up and says 'The spirit has prompted
me to tell somebody named onewatt to go on a mission,' then I'll go." Yeah...
Anyway, at the end of the conference, surprise surprise, nobody had said anything.
Finally it was President Hinkley's turn to speak to close the conference. I have no
idea what he said but the instant he opened his mouth I was filled with the
absolute knowledge that it was time to go. There was no feeling with it, just
knowledge.
I think that not allowing us to often experience a unique sensation from the Holy
Ghost is by design, and it allows us to choose to believe in inspiration from
above, or to choose to believe in intellect from within - without condemnation. I
also think that's why the Holy Spirit relies mostly on triggering our own emotions.
It helps us be free to choose what to believe. It gives us as long as we need to
develop our own relationship with the Holy Ghost, without getting into trouble for
ignoring him in the past.
/rambling
tl;dr: In my opinion, when we feel an emotion or a physical sensation but say "that
is the spirit" we're reaching beyond the mark. I think that most of the time the
Holy Ghost doesn't really feel like anything, but his influence can increase and
improve our capacity for powerful emotional experiences, and our sensitivity to
emotion and spiritual sensations.