First Force, Second Force, and Third Force are important concepts in The Fourth Way/The Work. Understanding these concepts will clarify how to approach your endeavors in a manner that doesn’t create counterforce. First Force is the “I want/I need/I should” doership posture; Second Force is the resistance that arises in response to it. Without Third Force, the first two forces would simply cancel each other out, and nothing would actually happen. Third Force is neither a result of the conflict nor a resolution—it is the connecting factor that enables something new. It then becomes the First Force of the next dynamic.
This article builds on the Three Forces Model by focusing on a key obstacle to the convergence of the Forces: mechanical doership or ‘forcing’ from the posture of ‘I want/I need/I should,’ which generates excessive First Force and oppositional Second Force. By first dissolving doership—through non-identification and watching compulsions dissolve—the space opens for Third Force to appear naturally, allowing the three forces to merge into effortless action. In this reconceptualization, ‘Third Force’ is the actual creative force that can function through us when we are in the aforementioned non-doership state. It is something that contains and enables the triad, rather than a separate and independent force that completes it. That being said, this article does not aim to replace the original Three Forces model. Instead, it aims to present a more comprehensible and practical reconceptualization that allows one to operate more efficiently, even by the original model’s standards.
First Force: Intending and Forcing
First Force is not “action” itself. It is the psychological orientation of forcing reality to align with what you want: actively wanting, hankering after, or gripping an outcome. Ascribing self-worth to an outcome is also First Force. The feeling of importance is an indicator that First Force is at play. Anything you need to justify—either to yourself or to others—also suggests the involvement of First Force.
At first glance, it might seem that First Force manages to achieve the goal it is directed towards. Those who have been hopelessly addicted to the most soul-gripping substances have managed to set themselves free. Many successful people who teach others to be successful like them also emphasize the importance of “the grind.”
It would then seem that the key to success is to keep exerting First Force until Second Force throws in the towel. Modern culture romanticizes the conflict between First and Second Force and sees it as absolutely essential to living a meaningful life. As far as fiction is concerned, there is no interesting story without a conflict, but in real life, the return on investment for First Force is poor. Someone might subject themselves through years of a career they hate, achieving external success but developing chronic anxiety and losing connection to what originally motivated them. The success came at the cost of their well-being.
This is not to say that the hard-working— especially those beloved, self-made multi-millionaires on YouTube—are secretly suffering consequences that would deem their endeavors unworthy. If you listen to their advice and look at it through the lens of the Three Forces, you’ll notice their discipline advice often amounts to performing actions so consistently that the action loses its heavy significance—it becomes simply what you do, not something you’re forcing yourself to do.
Second Force: Resistance
When you force reality to conform to your desires, resistance arises proportional to the force applied. This is where Second Force comes into play. It counteracts the active “I want” posture (often expressed as effort). The more one puts effort into something, the more they generate Second Force.
To illustrate this, take, for example, when one tries to “create” closeness in a relationship. They say: “Tell me, let’s talk about it. Don’t be so secretive,” to get you to open up about personal matters. You might have naturally opened up during the course of the conversation, but now you’ll feel averse to opening up. Their wanting you to open up causes you to close up. You might then try to open up because you feel that you should be close with this person. But the only result is a strained relationship—one that must rely on contrivances to sustain itself, draining the energy of its participants, even if the interactions are enjoyable and the two are getting closer. As good as such a relationship might appear on the outside, it is not sustainable.
This idea of Second Force doesn’t only apply to interpersonal relations. Second Force comes in many forms. If you are changing a habit, homeostasis exerts Second Force. A common example is excessive calorie restriction. The more aggressively you restrict (First Force), the more your body fights back by conserving energy (Second Force), making weight loss progressively harder. If you are trying to change your social standing, then those who are attached to an image of your current self will exert Second Force. This happens because your change threatens their stable understanding of who you are in relation to them—the more you push to change (First Force), the more they unconsciously work to maintain the status quo (Second Force).
One caveat with the last example is that not all “acting against” is Second Force. Second Force only exists in relation to First Force. If you try to move a mountain by pushing on it with all your strength, your failure to move it is not due to Second Force. The mountain itself doesn’t generate Second Force—it’s simply immovable. But if you’ve attached your self-worth to being ‘someone who can move mountains’ (First Force), then your failure will generate internal Second Force proportional to your ego investment—shame, damaged self-esteem, self-criticism.
Third Force: The Activity of Inaction
By this point, it is clear that we conceptualize “doing” as a psychological orientation rather than the performance of an action. A river does not “do” anything, yet it flows. It naturally finds its way around obstacles and even erodes them over time. The terrain dictates its path while, at the same time, it shapes the terrain. Similarly, when we stop “doing,” we do not become inert objects. Instead, the gap between who you are and what you do is dissolved. Others might see you doing all sorts of things, but to yourself, you simply are.
You are not writing to “be a writer”; you are simply bringing out the stories that are coming to mind. You don’t “put yourself out there” to attract a partner; you make social connections as far as you are inclined to, and pursue someone romantically when the occasion arises. You aren’t trying to “improve” yourself or your circumstances; you act from intuition on a moment-to-moment basis and accept the changes that occur as a result. Ideals, goals, compulsions, or obligations no longer govern you. There might be circumstances in which you end up following them or even creating your own, but they are never authoritative.
The Experience of Nondoership
Unlike First and Second Force, which are obvious in their conflict (‘I am pushing’ / ‘life is pushing back’), Third Force is recognizable by the absence of self-conflict. When it’s active, action arises without internal deliberation or resistance. There’s a sense of rightness or flow—not because you’ve convinced yourself it’s right, but because the action emerges naturally from your engagement with the situation. This doesn’t necessarily mean absence of external conflict. In fact, you might encounter more friction from the outside when you are acting authentically. The only difference from before is that the external conflict will remain ex/ternal rather than affecting your internal state.
Third Force only comes when you surrender to what you are, instead of trying to become what you want to be. Remember: you are not your present circumstance, but your entire life—past, present, and future. You can probably look back to a “failure” in the past that became a condition for a “success.” Similarly, something that seemed fortunate at the time might have developed into a problem. Life is not composed of individually existing “phases” or “chapters” — it is one movement. What appears as a discrete problem or achievement is actually part of a larger trajectory that you can’t fully see from within your current moment. Minimizing First Force doesn’t mean you take what you imagine to be the path of least resistance. It means you follow the flow of your unique existence without compromise toward notions of how you, others, or circumstances “should be.”
Discipline when Taking the Forces into Account
When we adopt this framework, we must adapt some concepts we take for granted.
Discipline becomes the art of performing challenging actions without generating First Force. It functions to direct effortless actions and to prevent entropy. Stress becomes the temptation to “want” a particular outcome (such as success or minimal difficulty) and/or the urge to apply effort. Frustration is the pent-up energy that you usually spend in conflict, energy you are not used to containing.
In order to build discipline, we must stop making ourselves do things. This means that when you encounter any compulsion—internal or external—you do nothing and just watch the sensation until it dissolves. For example, if you feel the urge to go to the gym because you were ruminating about being aesthetically unappealing, don’t go to the gym. If you are stewing in resentment and feel like sending an angry message, don’t make contact with the person. If you feel pressured to take a particular course of action so others will stop pestering you, put up with their pestering instead. The action in question isn’t the issue, but the state from which you do it. When you observe the emotion inside of you, you automatically separate from it, because you’ll be aware that you are not the emotion but instead the one watching the mind experience the emotion.
Without your identification to fuel the “realness” of the emotion, the emotion dies off. Then, whatever action you perform will be an authentic, non-contrived expression. Use common sense when using this method– sometimes you might have to act from compulsion on time-sensitive matters, such as filing your taxes. But the more you free yourself from compulsion when it arises, the less often it will arise when you least expect it. All the difficulty in this endeavor is front-loaded.
It’s not about doing or not doing something—it’s about the mental orientation from which you interact with the world. That being said, the absence of doership does not mean bedrotting, nor does it entail sinking into vices. Laziness and degenerative indulgences are themselves symptoms of Second Force, which in turn is a symptom of First Force.
