Does a retreat offer no benefit if you do not dream of deities teaching spiritual techniques?

Not dreaming of deities teaching techniques does not mean a retreat brought no benefit. I have dreamed of deities, but if you mean receiving an entire set of hand gestures or footwork directly in a dream, honestly, I have not experienced that.

I had heard others say they learned techniques in dreams during retreat and was curious. I even tried meditating beneath a deity's seat, but did not have such an experience. However, I did not interview those people in detail and do not know precisely what they meant by being taught. I would therefore not use my own experience to draw conclusions about everyone's dreams.

In my experience of practice, dreams are more like reminders. After waking, I reflect on what they suggest and then act on it, gradually learning something. To assess growth, consider the learning that follows too. A dream need not contain a scene of someone teaching techniques for divine teaching and personal learning to have occurred.

In conversation with YOYO, she shared dream experiences involving seated meditation and traveling with spiritual soldiers. My own retreats more often involved meditation, recalling the past, and gaining new insights through it. These experiences differ. One person's dreams cannot establish how everyone should respond after retreat. As for whether you have actually learned a skill, you still need to practice while awake. Having a dream does not mean the ability is already established.

In another reflection on retreat, I also described having no perception of the deities at all after entering the room, and only feeling the energy return on the day I emerged. During those days, I saw more clearly what I wanted in my heart: even without special visions, I still deeply wanted to learn from the Bodhisattva and help people. For me, this was an important realization.

So I do not agree with simply telling people to sleep during retreat and the deities will naturally come to teach. Different traditions and individuals have different arrangements, but quiet cultivation, meditation, scripture recitation, and facing oneself remain work to be done. Whether deities appear in the way you expected cannot be directly equated with whether you earnestly learned something on that retreat.