"99 Homes"
Reviewed by Joy Ramos Davis

Synopsis: "99 Homes" is a gripping film that highlights America's housing market catastrophe - specifically the Foreclosure Crash of 2010 in Orlando, Florida.

Warning: Contains Spoilers

Loving & Compassionate Detachment

The are two central characters to the story: Rick Carver and Dennis Nash.

Rick Carver is a corrupt Real Estate Broker that likes to exploit government and banking rules so he can evict honest homeowners who have financial problems.  He brings in his contracted crew to quickly remove their belongings,  repossess the home, then flip it for profit.  He's amassed a sizable fortune, owning a string of homes this way.

Then there's Dennis Nash, a low-income construction worker and single father who gets evicted from his childhood home by Carver.  He is forced out, along with his mother, Lynn, and young son.  To financially survive, he takes up Carver's offer to do some odd jobs and is later hired to be his assistant for great pay.

There is a basic spiritual understanding that the way to be in this world is to be detached, but not in a cold way, but more of a loving and compassionate detachment.  Cold detachment can harden the heart, which was obvious with Rick Carver and his predatory tendencies.  His method of evicting people from their beloved homes was brutal and hard to watch.By practicing loving and compassionate detachment, it can keep your heart open, flexible and free-flowing to give and receive.  This was Dennis Nash's natural tendency.  Due to dire circumstances, he changed for the worst.  Barely surviving,  he was easily seduced by the potential of earning a lot of money in real estate through Rick Carver for his family's sake to make it.Losing a home you love can be devastating.  The film focuses on the victim and perpetrator in this whole real estate mess.  The illusion of this world is that these labels are a construct of the mind.  It's so easy to get caught up in the duality that you're either a victim or a perpetrator.  The detached state (that's loving, yet compassionate) allows you to see beyond the duality as a curious observer, watching everyone play out their roles beautifully and having the knowingness that it's just a lesson for all involved to learn from in their lifetime.  They're just lessons to learn from.  By choice, we don't have to emotionally invest in them, but many do by nursing their emotional wounds from personal tragedies.  And, if you don't learn the lesson, it just comes back around again.  Different players, same lesson.

Abundance & The Law of Attraction

Rick Carver is an interesting study in the Law of Attraction.  He actually attracts and manifests great wealth easily because he has an abundance mindset to activate it in his favor.  The universal Law of Attraction can work for ALL.  It can be used for selfish gain, like Carver does with real estate.  Or, the Law of Attraction can be used for the good of the whole.  He basically seeks out opportunities and is open to it, like an open hand waiting to receive.  There's no emotional resistance to allowing money to flow effortlessly to him.  This explains how even corrupt people have become ridiculously wealthy.  Someone with poverty consciousness, like Nash, doesn't see abundance everywhere like Carver does when he drives around town looking at homes in an opportunistic way.

There is a saying that God loves us so much that he'll shower us with more experiences to support our beliefs.  So, if you have a core belief of there's just not enough money, God will lovingly shower you with being around like-minded people and circumstances to support that.  If you have a core belief that there's more than enough money to go around, the same applies with what God would do.  Just look at your current financial situation - a culmination of your all your thoughts and beliefs about money.  If you don't like it, then change your beliefs, change your life. 

Dennis Nash is also an interesting study, but about reaching critical mass.  He unravels from doing a series of unethical work for his boss in exchange for more money than he's use to earning.  Nash is totally out of alignment with his basic nature of goodness and wholesomeness.  He had let go of his authenticity.  It usually shows up first as a nagging feeling that something inside of us is not quite right; subtle pangs from the heart.  It later become all-consuming because you've compromised your values.  If Nash looks within himself, there's a disconnect between his mind and heart.

Wanting Approval, Control and Security

Based on the self-help teachings of the Sedona Method, everyone has three basic wants: approval, control, and security.  On a subconscious level, we desire the three basic wants and its opposite - wanting both approval and disapproval, wanting control and being out-of-control, and wanting security and insecurity.

These wants are played out beautifully by both Carver and Nash.  Carver wants control through the pursuit of wealth.  He also wants his life to be out-of-control from people hating him for being evicted and carries a gun for protection from them.  Nash wants security by keeping his home.  He also wants insecurity by choosing financial hardship to lose his home and losing his morals.

If you do an honest review of your own life, you'll notice times you've wanted approval, control or security, but also its opposite as well.