Yes, you have absolutely right points… Sprituality is often transformed into Religion by adding up political and economycal interests… Also, Religions can make the mind of the followers under “control” by using hope and fear… “Spiritual Materialism” is a term created by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who lived and died in United States, he says:

Walking the spiritual path properly is a very subtle process;
it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous
sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of
spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are de-
veloping spiritually when instead we are strengthening our
egocentricity through spiritual techniques. This fundamental
distortion may be referred to as spiritual materialism.

So I think that this might be the problem when “leaders” act in a way that is not what they say it should be… So I prefer to get connected more to the elements than to some person, because even the teacher is made of the five elements, everything come from the elements… I also prefer the older forms of spirituality, and also older forms of conceiving life and health, like yoga and using plants to heal body and mind…

One of the things I found on internet and it is not “religious” at all is alternative forms of agriculture and building ^^ Permaculture is very famous and there are awesome videos on youtube about it ^^ And here in Brasil lives a man that I admire as a super hero, he “invented” the “Syntropic Agriculture”, but in the way he talks about nature and life I think he would not say he “invented” it but that he “perceived” it ^^ These two ways (Permaculture and Syntropic Agriculture) of looking to world made me feel there is ways out of human extinction by destruction of nature’s life sources :)

Here is a link to the english version of a Syntropic Agriculture group website https://lifeinsyntropy.org/en/ ^^

Would you like to share links of things you found on the web that made you see a better world and how to make it? ^^