Yes, since "beginingless time" the Buddha also mentioned how we have all been beheaded countless times during which the blood (if collected would fill the vast oceans many times over). It's difficult to fathom the horrors that go on in this world, now and before and will surely come after as well.... and we have been both the perpetrators and the victims many times over.
So, with that in mind, I wholeheartedly agree with Ajahn Brahm when he says the the most compassionate thing we can do for this world is to liberate ourselves. Spend time uprooting the defilements so that we won't have to continue contributing to the ceaseless round of suffering so in evidence....
Therefore as you say
I try to meet whatever arises be it pleasant or unpleasant. I try to experience life as it really is and as it happens.
This is a very good place to start and continue.
Many years ago I visited an "exhibition" at a hospital in Bangkok. Full of huge poster size pictures of people injured (from a variety of causes), sick/diseased or disabled. It was a real "gore fest". It could be taken to be very depressing aspect of life OR viewed as just the way it is. Without becoming too morbid about it.
A friend of mine has just returned from Burma. She was practicing very austere techniques of sitting with/through intense pain (she could sit lotus for six hours! or she was able to sit "Burmese style" crossed leg one in front of the other for 10 hours straight. Some of the Burmese there were sitting 16 hours!! From 1pm to 5am!!). Just her telling me about it made me sweat!!!
Anyway, she said that she was able to "break through the pain barrier" as it were. The initial 3 hours or so could be worse than after 8 or 9.... And the pain would come and go. Excruciating at times. And then poof gone for a while only to be back later. I know extreme pain (longest I've ever sat was 3 hours and that was hell pain enough, I can't even contemplate what she was getting up to).
She said that what she learnt the most from her 3 months there was how much we fear pain. The avoidance of pain physical or emotional governs so much of we as human beings try to do. She is beginning to see how so much of all this pain is in the mind. And how even with extreme physical pain we add to it so much mentally.
My practice has been mostly around vipassana and samatha meditation. I know that I need to do some metta practice to balance out my practice as a means to allowing the darkness in because I know that to live only in the light is to live in ignorance.
I think that metta is a great practice to cultivate too.
Enough said.
Peace,
Piers