I learned a lot of things there! The training I received was focused on two components, what they called Awakening and Responsibility—Awakening referring to contemplative practices and monastic structures designed to lead to classical enlightenment, and Responsibility was hands-on leadership training through helping their non-profit organization.
Learning about power was indeed one of the most valuable lessons I learned there, specifically on the responsibility side. Basically, I went from not caring about power, and subtly believing I shouldn't have it, to believing that it's worth using the power I have to do good things. Nowadays, I spend most of my time doing service projects, using my power to benefit others. My blog and this post is one of them!
My teacher had definitions of wisdom, love, and power that he shared in his teachings, which I personally found useful, but you're right, there aren't culturally agreed upon definitions of them. I find getting to know people over time gives you a sense of their character, their values, their strengths, and their weaknesses. When I meet someone I deem to be wise and loving, I want to help them, give them resources, connect them to people, and find other ways to support them.
I'm basing a new business (Hostwriting, hostwriting.com) off of this method, but I combine it with other people asking and ordering the questions. I also like to have people verbally answer questions as a preliminary first draft.
Ha! And me as well. You're the main reason my handle these days tends to be mwfogleman or variations thereof. :)
The funny thing to me isn't that there's another person with my name on the internet, who has a presence on the internet. The funny thing is that our interests overlap (to some extent) from what I can tell. I've done less programming but it's been a consistent interest of mine for some time. I tend to program in Clojure but I like Python and Go very much. :)
If you're interested in doing these techniques practically, Arthur Whimbey's materials on writing could be very helpful. They give you a more systematic and practical approach than is presented here.
I learned to code largely because of my interest in Linux and Emacs. Connecting to a sense of pleasure, fun, and interest is critical to successful learning in any domain- I've found this to be true in exercise and meditation, too :)
Clojure was my first programming language. I've been playing around with a language with pointers recently, and I wonder if you could explain to me what you mean about "symbols which are natural pointers."
More generally, I don't think I understand yet why someone would use pointers instead of a variable.
I found Anki / spaced repetition helpful when learning (still learning, always learning) Emacs. I make cloze deletion cards for the commands and their explanations.