I ought to mention that while I was in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY, I never learned Rav Chaim of Brisk's book nor Rav Shach. I only mention these two great books as being the prime examples of the deep kind of learning that I experienced in Shar Yashuv and the Mir. The actual classes and their lessons that I did learn and listen to were mostly never published.
I mean to say that the great Torah Scholar that I learned from in Shar Yashuv was Naftali Yeager and the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir that I learned from was Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, but I doubt if anything they ever said was actual written down and kept safe for later generations. So in order to give people an idea of this deep kind of learning I simply latch onto the Chidushie HaRambam of Rav Chaim of Brisk and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.
[I did learn achronim in both places like the Maharsha and Pnei Yehoshua and many other achronim on the Gemara. But that is different than Rav Shach and Rav Chaim.]
The thing about the path of the Gra is that it places a lot of emphasis on not showing off one's religiosity.
There is in this path [as I experience this in Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY] an implicit awareness that what people say they believe is most often the exact opposite of what they actually believe. You can see this a bit in the verse כבוד אלקים הסתר דבר "the honor of G-d is to hide it," and "What does the Lord your G-d ask of you but... and to walk modestly with the Lord your G-d."
You see this kind of irony in Socrates also when he asked the slave about a question in Geometry that teh slave boy did not know the answer to but by careful questioning Socrates brought out that knowledge. And that was without any statement at all, just questions. That shows that there are things we know but we do not know that we know them. And also continually he showed that almost everything people think they know, they really do not know. Thus it is with faith. Those that show it off by rituals and clothes might think they have faith but are in fact empty.
