 Orthogonal ideal splitting for a nondegenerate Killing form

For an ideal of a Lie algebra $I$ and nondegenerate Killing form, invariance makes $I^{\perp }$ an ideal. An element of $I\cap I^{\perp }$ commutes with $I$, so the intersection is an abelian ideal. Abelian ideals lie in the radical of the Killing form, forcing the intersection to vanish. Thus $\mathfrak{g}=I\oplus I^{\perp }$ as commuting ideals. Iterating minimal nonzero ideals gives the direct-sum formulation of a semisimple Lie algebra.