overcome everything

"Is the green fog, like the guardian, something that one has to overcome in order to SEE?" I asked Don Juan.

"Yes. One must overcome everything," he said.

"How can I overcome the green fog?"

"The same way you should have overcome the guardian, by letting it turn into nothing."

"What should I do?"

"Nothing. For you, the green fog is something much easier than the guardian...You never really SAW the guardian."

"Maybe that was because I didn't like it."

"No, you still don't understand. It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike the guardian. As long as you have a feeling toward it, the guardian will remain the same: monstrous, beautiful, or whatever. If, on the other hand, you have no feeling toward it, the guardian will become nothing and will still be there in front of you."

I insisted on asking him what he meant by that.

"You thought the guardian was something you knew; that's what I mean."

"But I didn't think it was something I knew."

"You thought: it was ugly; its size was awesome; it was a monster. You know what all those things are. So the guardian was always something you knew, and as long as it was something you knew you did not SEE it. I have told you already, the guardian had to become nothing and yet it had to stand in front of you. It had to be there and it had, at the same time, to be nothing."