How to place y ticks' labels inside the bars?

Add axis on top to avoid bars overprinting labels.

Then we want

y tick label style={anchor=west,color=white,xshift=\pgfkeysvalueof{/pgfplots/major tick length}},

to:

• anchor at the west of the label,
• colored white so the text shows over black, and
• shifted one tick width to the right, since presumably you did not want to change the position of the tick marks themselves.

We also need bar shift=0pt to center the labels vertically in the bars.

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.11}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
 \begin{axis}[
  %axis lines={left, },% xtick=\empty
  %axis lines={left, right},
  %legend style={draw=none},
  %
  %/pgfplots/axis y line*=box|left|middle|center|right|none 219
  %giving up on removing top and right lines%%%
  compat=newest,
  axis on top,
  title=Gears Rxf,
  xbar, xmin=0,
  bar width= 1.0cm,
  width=12cm, height=5cm, enlarge y limits=0.5,
  xlabel={Points},
  %==========
  y=2.5cm,
  symbolic y coords={Special,Normal},
  ytick={Special, Normal}, 
  y tick label style={anchor=west,color=white,xshift= \pgfkeysvalueof{/pgfplots/major tick length}},
  bar shift=0pt,
  %yticklabel style={inner ysep=0pt, anchor=south east},
  nodes near coords, nodes near coords align={horizontal},
 ]
 \addplot[color=gray,fill] coordinates {(2.31,Normal)};
 \addplot[color=black,fill] coordinates {(2.58,Special)};
 \end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}