The Hindu triad and creation myth - Alagu Chockalingam

There are many Hindu creation myths, as many I think as the numerous gods of the religion. However the commonality in all of these is the triad (trimurti) – the three supreme gods, Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer of evil. For the purpose of this essay I chose the following myth.
‘After each old universe is destroyed nothing is left but a vast ocean. Floating on this ocean, resting on the great snake Ananta, is Lord Vishnu. Some say that a lotus flower springs from his navel and from this comes Lord Brahma. And it is from Lord Brahma that all creation comes. Everything comes from one - Lord Brahma, who is part of the Supreme One - so everything is part of the Supreme One. For this universe, this world and this Lord Brahma, like all those before and all those to come, will be destroyed by Lord Shiva. How long is the life of a universe? Its length is beyond imagination. One day to Lord Brahma is longer than four thousand million of the years that we know. Every night when Lord Brahma sleeps the world is destroyed. Every morning when he awakes it is created again. When the Lord Brahma of this universe has lived a lifetime of such days the universe is completely destroyed by Lord Shiva. Everything disappears into the Supreme One. For an unimaginable period of time chaos and water alone exist. Then once again Lord Vishnu appears, floating on the vast ocean. From Lord Vishnu comes forth Lord Brahma of the new universe and the cycle continues forever.’
Here creation is said to have come from Brahma, who is found in a lotus that springs from Vishnu’s navel. This placement of the flower intrigues, as since it was brahmas imagination that created the universe why didn’t the flower spring from his head or eyes or heart, why the navel? My own reflections on this have caused me to conclude that this is due to the navel being the last point of emotional feeling, the greatest depth of emotion is felt from there. Why do I think this? Well maybe because of the many expressions we have – on getting bad news one is prone to say ‘I couldn’t stomach it’, if we are nervous we feel ‘butterflies in our stomach’. In yoga and other systems that use the chakras the navel is associated with the ‘manipuraka’ chakra which is said to be the connection to our internal source of power and energy. I understand this to mean that we draw on our internal energy to create or give life to what we imagine.
Vishnu’s role maybe the easiest to understand, when something is created it needs to be sustained. His role in the creation is that of keeping the balance and regulating it. This could explain his many avatars on earth in order to regulate(in his avatars as Krishna or Rama) or help save mankind(matsya avatar-where he is a fish that helps manu).
Shiva’s role in the creation is more complex, why must he destroy? The rationale behind this in Hindu philosophy is that in order to create, something must be destroyed to allow space for creation. This role is sometimes explained in Shiva’s dance the tandava nritya which is linked to the cycle of creation, a vigorous dance, which is called rudra tandava when associated with destruction. When I thought about it, I figured that the destruction here could possibly be required only if the balance is upset for example when bad outweighs good or when growth and movement slows and stagnation occurs. So here Shivas tandava could be him shaking things up. A restarting of the energy flow that is creation.
The strong connection between these three phases is emphasized by the connection of the gods, Brahma growing from Vishnu’s navel and Vishnu appearing on the ocean that Shiva creates upon destruction. This is probably intended to convey that one cannot happen without the other, that it is a flow of connected events.
Now removing the names to each god and looking at them as different energies we could end up with something like this; At any beginning there is chaos or rather a large amount of unorganized energy with no direction, when this is given direction creation occurs, this we do through imagination drawing on an inner power and energy to channelize it. However when the balance is upset something must be done to restore it, however before something new can be created the imbalance must be removed here destruction occurs.