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Explore More:
The As Above Academy offers diverse spaces for you to experience a deeper understanding of yourself and your essential place in our world. Our programs are designed to guide you inward, and to help you identify your own compass, roadmaps, and connections.
We nurture self-awareness and encourage more playful and authentic self-expression. Activate your spirit, heart, mind, and body in more integrated, inspired, and fulfilling ways. Come discover who you are as an individual in the community of humanity, on this living planet, and within this ineffable universe.
The As Above Academy invites you to explore your own unique gifts, expand your capacity to contribute, and evolve the power of consciousness in our universe. With your soulful participation, the world becomes more fully realized.
The As Above Academy co-creates lively and wonder-filled spaces where people gather, connect and explore insights, ideas, and inspirations for the purpose of expanding awareness and evolving human consciousness.
The As Above Academy seeks to move us all beyond our challenges and envisions a more thriving future. Here we align with others while learning to cooperate and evolve with Life itself.
We invite you to discover and activate your creative capacities, transform and master your quality of being, and integrate and transcend old limitations. Embrace your true self, unleash your soul’s full potential, and step into a life of wonder, purpose, and fulfillment.
We imagine a world where everyone’s personal passion and creative capacities serve as the internal compass for their life, their engagements with their communities, and their contributions to the world.
We inspire individuals to expand their self-awareness, explore new ways of being a co-creative community, and participate meaningfully in humanity’s evolving alliance with all of life.
We are a collective fostering transformation through consciousness, energy, and creativity.
I have held a lifelong commitment to self-examination and participation in a wide spectrum of personal growth disciplines. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and worked toward a Master’s Degree in Psychology. The title, Student of Life, surely applies.
In addition, a career as a professional stage and screen actress developed an elaborate sense of imagination. All this has led me to the world of social dreaming.
I began lucid dreaming at age 5, experienced precognitive dreams, and received universal “downloads” that proved pivotal at important moments throughout my life.
I learned at a young age that there was far more to life than physical reality. I also learned at a young age that was not a well-accepted reality for most people. My passion for ZLab is its collective focus on exploring greater awarenesses – both inner and universal – with an intention to create a collaborative community that recognizes we each have our own path, our own superpowers, and that not one size fits all in arriving at our individual optimal operating system. ZLab aims to elevate humanity’s vibration. Wow! What better an investment.
If I’d been born 500 years ago, I’d have been an explorer of lands unknown, and a sailor of seas not yet sailed.
Having been born more recently, yet not so far into the future as to be able to explore other stars and galaxies, I’ve decided to be an explorer of inner space. My adventures into this beingness involve learning how to respond to the needs of my sensory body; exploring how to swim within the oceanic currents of sensitivity; discovering how to navigate the ever-changing terrain of imagination, and experiencing real-time communion with the essence of Source that sustains and nurtures me.
Through a sequence of serendipitous circumstances, I went through a process of “waking up” in my late 30s that resulted in a transformed understanding of the nature of reality.
One aspect of this new perspective is the belief that humanity is in the process of ascending to a higher level of consciousness, and that lightworkers around the planet, each in our own way, contribute to this collective awakening. I count myself among these, and in my academic career as an organization theorist, my teaching and research addresses the idea that organizations are evolving in ways that reflect this underlying evolution of human civilization. My calling in life is to help develop organizations that are aligned with this emergent higher level of consciousness, and managed in ways that reflect new purposes, values, and capabilities to contribute to the conscious evolution of the planet.
I am inspired by everyone living their soul’s purpose and no longer subscribing to a soul crushing job in soul crushing traffic. I want to liberate human potential and remove the faulty wiring of our self-limiting belief systems.
I have focused my energies on emergent ways of being and uncovering our essence and living it as one’s mission and passion in life. I am also skilled in parts work / shadow work and have done 1 on 1 facilitation with a number of growth and development organizations. I am an engineer by day, and purpose facilitator by night.
My dream is all companies, organizations, governments, neighborhoods, schools operating in a way that everyone has a meaningful voice.
I brought sociocracy to the English-speaking world beginning in 1990. I continue to enjoy encouraging the development of organic organizations that operate with a lively, multi-hearted sense of being. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA with my wife, Ramona, an internationally certified mediator.
Thomas B.W. Nicholson has worked in a variety of industries and roles over the years-with a focus in operations and administration-often for non-profits or small family-run businesses; in other roles he has been an event planner and fundraiser, managing the VIP experience at LA PRIDE, receptions for 300, multi-day conferences, one highlighting a multi-national program, with speakers from as far away as Japan, and various personal growth retreats.
As a student, Nicholson majored in Mass Communications, with a focus in Public Relations and minors in History and Political Science, at West Texas A&M University. In addition, he has a certificate in event management from Cal Poly Pomona, and fundraising techniques from Amarillo College. Nicholson spent his semester abroad as a student at Oxford University, Oxford, England.
In non-academic work, Nicholson has studied and co-taught courses in Andea Shamanism, completed various self-development work (i.e. Landmark), and continues to pursue a deeper understanding of that which we call the human experience.
Nicholson has a long history of community involvement which has led him to work with non-profit organizations, having overseen special events, fundraising, community outreach, media and public relations and board and donor relations, and volunteer management.
In his spare time, he is an avid reader enjoying all genera of literature, is a confirmed news junkie and is an ardent student of life. He was born in Houston, TX, lived in Amarillo for a time, and for the past couple of decades has lived in many different neighborhoods in Los Angeles County.
I am here for such a time as this — to make a significant difference in this incredibly crucial, transitional, transformational period in human history. If I had to sum up my life-purpose, I’d say that my passion is to inspire each person I encounter to see and be who they truly are. I do this through a myriad of intentional methods — hypnotherapy, shamanism, healing modalities, painting-instructions, my writings, and everyday engagements with humans who cross my path.
For years now, I’ve sought to find my place in this world — where I can freely, truly, be mySelf, and relate to others in an authentic, transparent and consciously-engaging way. I have found that “place” with ZLab. I am both honored and thrilled to be amongst so many remarkable humans, who are giving our all, to whomsoever also feels this most sacred of callings: to raise the Consciousness of Life on Earth. If this speaks to you, if this pulls on the heart-strings of your Soul, join us!
I come much more alive when I see people achieving greater awareness together and creating greater fullness in life for themselves and others.
I am a licensed clinical psychologist who has been in private practice in California for more than 30 years. I work with individuals, groups, teams, and organizations to help them learn, grow, and heal when faced with a range of difficulties.
Outside of my practice, one of my absolute favorite activities is ZLab’s Collective Dreaming Matrix. These unique events have the power to connect people in a profound way, offering the potential to transform individuals and even society. The Collective Dreaming Matrix experience reveals to all its participants that we share a deep and abiding relatedness to each other and, collectively, hold the capacity to advance consciousness and global attunement.
I believe in the evolutionary potential of humanity — the more we come together, the greater our positive impact can be in the world.
The Story…Before breath or word, a field of endless possibility—diverse, infinite, and unrushed.
At times, my story tells of a builder drawn to shaping unique spaces and translating complex ideas into tangible form. At others, it’s a dance between roles: father, brother, mentor, poet… beloved to my beloved, Dena Lynn.
I cherish the act of exploring this experience called life—the joy, the struggle, the sacred and profane, the rich and the bare. And… When I engage with deep curiosity and authenticity, I meet myself and the world anew—again and again, over and over, story after story, each encounter deepening the mystery.
Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” If that is so, then these are but emergent pieces of an endless anthology, waiting to intertwine with yours. A commingling of our pages, transferring ink, stories, feelings – exploring. Each challenged by our curiosity; Each changed, enriched, and expanded by the sharing.
Creating spaces for sharing these stories—yours, mine, ours—is some of the most meaningful work I know.
Shall we turn the page?
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