Ok, so you're stuck at 520. That's fine. First start with Petra. Get her ascendant challenge done and do some daily bounties to get the 8 done. Those are easy. Run a NF, that will also boost you a lot until you reach 540. See if anyone is willing to carry you into the shattered throne quest for step 1-2, those are easy and you can cheese them this week. Those give huge boosts. Try to also be carried in tier 4 blind well as that gives a very big reward as well. Also, if you can buy a few fireteam medallions, that will help. After these go do Spider 540* bounty and also see if you can get either the clan engram or get someone to carry you in the raid. If not the raid, at least do the clan part. After this point, you should be able to do the strike and other weeklies and be at least at 540+. If you can get into all of the high power stuff, you may get as high as 550. If none of them, get into an EP or blind well and farm for prime engrams, although they drop less now that people exploited it.

Hate to admit it but I was making the same mistake for a day or so and getting really frustrated in the process. I'll admit I had hoped that running the Dreaming City and fighting higher level enemies I would see better rewards. But at the same time following a more specific set of goals thru the weeklies and such at least helps guide players in a specific direction of they want to increase their light level.

without doing the daily or weekly activities, what are you doing in the game? You can also power up via the prime engram drops