Yeah, you’re definitely not alone there... if you’re looking for something a little more digestible, the 4 movie “Rebuild of Evangelion” series is a bit less abstract and slightly more willing to “come out and say” its message (however the message of Rebuild is not quite the same as the show or as End of Evangelion, the movie capstone of the show).

It’s possible that you had already come to learn the lessons present, and thus the media has nothing to offer you, but if you were just too young or distracted and think you missed things, I recommend giving it another shot, as I feel these pieces of art are a wellspring of insight on the human condition

This might sound silly to some, but for a while now I’ve thought of NGE as almost “biblical”, like in the way it layers and intersperses meaning and symbolism throughout deeply personal stories, told under the auspices of world-ending cataclysm. And that’s before even discussing the “actual” “religious” elements of the plot, which are interesting in their own right - but which I’ve seen the creator downplay in an interview, which I find intriguing given what seems to be his overall message of rejecting “total escapism into fantasy”