This will be my summary of some 10 years of study:
I was raised in a muslim family and although my parents are liberal and don't care about religion, I still studied Islam when I went through my atheist phase and since I live in Syria, I got the unique chance to interact with various muslim/christian sects (some of the oldest you could say) I can say I got a decent grasp on Islam and Christianity and Ill write some points:
There is no 1 Islam. Sure some sheikh will tell you just accept Allah as the only god and Mohammad as the last prophet and boom you are a muslim, but that doesn't give you much to work with so you will soon get into the nitty gritty of which sect you would follow.
Sunni/Shia twelver Islam is very similar to Judaism, if it was not for the different languages used you would not notice a difference.
The origin of the Quran is... mysterious to say the least. It got lots of questions regarding the original manuscript and we have evidence today that contrary to what Muslims claim about the Quran being protected by Allah from being edited, it was actually edited and the various different old versions of Quran are unrecognizable I can't even read them.
The Qurans name is actually derived from the Aramaic word "Qeryana" which means "the book of prayers" and it refers to a Syriac christian special book of prayers that is used in early morning prayers.
I can speak classical Arabic and I would be lying if I said that I understand more than 60/70% of it. Its just not written well and no its not because its 1400 years old, muslims have been fighting over the meaning of many passages from long ago, so even the old muslims didnt understand what the Quran is about and we have evidence from Hadith that even Mohammad companions didnt understand.
The Quran was Mohammads miracle. See, Jesus walked on water and cured the ill, moses did his thing with the nile or whatever, but what about Mohammad? Muslims claim that the Quran is so poetic and written in beautiful Arabic that it is impossible to make something like it, but actually the Quran contains numerous typos and grammatical errors that even a kid who learn Modern Standard Arabic today wouldn't make, yet when you ask about this muslims have no answer.
There are many openings in the Quran which makes absolutely no sense, and if translated to English it would be like "ADKFG, etc etc", yet muslims claim they are some magical words, but when you read them in Syriac, you actually get some meaning out of it.
And an important point is that there was no Arabic in the 7th century, at least not as we know it and since we know that the Quran was written differently back then, and we know that Arabic is heavily influenced by Aramaic/Syriac, there has been new readings of the Quran which are called "Syrio-Aramaic readings" that you could google, the thing is that when you read the old Quran in aramaic it actually loos like a Christian sect, a Syriac one to be specific, even today many passages are hard to understand in Arabic but if read in Syriac it would be meaningful, for example the word used for virgins in heaven is "hour 'en" which doesn't make any sense in Arabic, but in Syriac it means white grapes, and white grapes in Christianity refers to eternal life or eternal peace afaik, but who decided it means virgins? Some guy from tabaristan in Iran, no joke.
Finally, following the Syriac tradition, and to make things complex, Mohammad is a name of Jesus in Syriac tradition, and the way Mohammad is written in Arabic is literally spelled Jesus (yeshua) in Syriac, this doesn't end here, the dome of rock in Palestine has one of the oldest Quranic verses that is written in the world, and what does it say? "May God bless Jesus".
So to me, I'm almost certain that Islam is some lost Judeo-Christian sect that was heavily reformed in the Abbasid era (some 200 years after Mohammad supposedly died). Even the early Islamic coins har crosses on them.
There is no evidence that Mecca existed in the 7th century, and there are many signs that the Quran and all the events of Islam did not really happen in Mecca and Medina, but in southern Syria or Jordan to be specific, for example the Quran speaks about sodom and gomorrah and it says that you see them daily, but they are some 1000 thousand kilometers from Mecca, also it speaks of Israel all the time, also it speaks of various trees that just dont exist in the desert of Mecca. Not to mention that there are no archeological evidence of Mecca, also the first Qibla (orientation of prayer) is actually Jerusalem and not Mecca, also Mohammad is only mentioned like 4 or 5 times, but Jesus and Moses way more.
Also, the black stone which is in the Kabaa of Mecca, it was actually worshipped in Homs (Syria), even the Roman emperor Elagabalus (born in Homs) took the black stone from Homs (Emesa) to Rome in a grand parade.
So don't get too caught up in Islam or the Quran, muslims dont know anything about the origins of islam and especially Sunnis, Shia twelvers are also lost in their Houssein bullshit, and if you don't know Arabic, you don't really know how badly written the Quran is. And I did not even talk about the various sects, oh boy we have everything from reincarnation to trinity and gnosticism to plato.
Imo the Druze, Alawites and Ismailis are the ones who have something to teach you, they have some solid philosophy incorporated from middle eastern paganism, Christianity and not the BS of wearing a hijab and blowing yourself up for some virgins or hurting yourself today till you bleed because your ancestors let Houssein down and didn't help. The sects I mentioned and the various sufis are ok, but also dont get caught up in their bullshit.
Some resources to become a Maker/Inventor:
Hackaday - https://hackaday.com/
Hackster - https://www.hackster.io/
Instructables - https://www.instructables.com/projects
Adafruit Industries - https://www.adafruit.com/
Make - https://makezine.com/
Arduino - https://www.arduino.cc/
Raspberry Pi - https://www.raspberrypi.com/
Well, you're imagining it right now. See?
In order to speak at all about a thing called enlightenment, you gotta have a picture in your mind of what it is, and then you also gotta tell yourself that your picture is valid. Otherwise you could not speak about it or even know that you're enlightened. So enlightenment comes with many assumptions and ideas. For example, you tell yourself that you had an enlightened and you tell yourself that your enlightenment is complete and all there is to the matter. Or you tell yourself that your enlightenment is incomplete. Or you tell yourself that your enlightenment is the same as the Buddha's or Rupert Spira's, or whatever.
I slowly start to see plants as the highest creation.
we have to kill to survive, no matter how hard we try not to. all forms of live somehow have to. except from plants.
actually, they're not a creation, they create themselves. they create out of air, sunlight, love. they live in stillness, meditating towards the sun. they provide us with oxygen and sugar, create entire eco-systems. they're holy