My first click was the link for "Accessing a value of an unexported identifier". Figured I'd see some reflection trick or similar. In looking at that code I still have no idea what it's doing in relation to accessing an unexported identifier.

So I went to the next link down, "Unexported fields from an exported struct". Figured this would be the clever way to access the "message" field. But again I don't get it. It seems it's the same code as the last example.

This either says something about my ability to understand Go code or that maybe a bit more exposition would be useful for at least some of the examples.

For that, you will need to know a bit about Go. The full totorial is here https://www.ardanlabs.com/blog/2014/03/exportedunexported-id...

So in the end there's really no trick, you still can't access them directly.