What "cycles" is everybody talking about?

Minor spoilers ahead.

Throughout the series multiple characters are refering to "cycles", "the next cycle", "all pieces are placed for the next cycle", "the next cycle starts now" and so on and some characters try to change something "in the next cycle" and so on.

There are a lot of time loops and bootstrap paradoxa which could be described as "cycles". But from the point of view of each character there is no such thing as a repeating cycle. No character expieriences any "cycle" (and especially more than one) in his personal timeline/life.

Jonas, Eve, Claudia and everybody else, expieriences a life where they are born, grow up, do timetravel, meet older selves, grow up more, become the older selves, meet the younger selves (now expieriencing the same meeting from the other side) and eventually grow old an die. Nobody expieriences a cycle through which he goes several times and where he could do something differently "next time". Jonas tries to prevent becoming his older self. But eventually he becomes his older self. And there is no "next time" or "next cycle" where he could try again.

So, while a bootstrap paradoxon could be described as cylce in the sense that it is a closed loop, there is nothing running multiple times from nobodies point of view. Only from the point of view of an item that is a bootstrap paradoxon (an item with no origin, that is passed from the future to the past) there would be cycles (and the question if the item shouldn’t age each cycle and eventually degrade). I’m not sure if we have bootstrapped items (not information) in the series (maybe the plans for the machine? The Boulder lamp of Jonas?) but it would not make sense, because those items should age and degrade each "cycle". Informational bootstrap paradoxa (like the book which was transported back in time and then "copied" and published) do not have this problem. Also the inheritance (daughter beeing the own mother) does not have it because it is also an informational bootstrap (DNA) and no material bootstrap.

So what "cylces" do the characters always talk about? Who (and how) has ever experienced a cycle (or even more than one)? Where do we see even one case where information or knowledge from one cycle is transported/present in the next cycle (and recognized by the characters so they could get the impression of cycles)?