 Upper central series of a Lie algebra

Each term is the preimage of the center of a Lie algebra after quotienting by the preceding term. Equivalently, $Z_{i+1}=\{x:[\mathfrak{g},x]\subseteq Z_i\}$. A Lie algebra is nilpotent exactly when this series reaches the whole algebra after finitely many steps. For the Heisenberg Lie algebra, the series is $0\subset \mathbb{C}c\subset \mathfrak{g}$.